H eadlines
Rescue Dogs — and a Rabbi — Help Prisoner in
California Find Redemption
NATIONAL ALIX WALL | JTA.ORG
VACAVILLE, CALIFORNIA
— Soon after Jon Grobman was
released from prison, where he
had once thought he would die,
he headed back inside volun-
tarily — this time with canine
sidekicks. Grobman was returning as
the newest hire of a nonprofit
group, Paws for Life K9 Rescue,
that had been instrumental in
his own long and difficult road
to redemption.

He won’t easily forget the
words of the judge who sentenced
him to life without parole. “If
I felt that you had any promise
to ever amount to anything in
your life, I wouldn’t give you this
sentence,” Grobman recalled the
judge saying.

The takeaway, Grobman said,
was that “he determined I had
no value to anyone or anything
in this world.” Sixteen years
later, his voice still shakes from
the memory.

Raised in a nonobservant
Jewish family in the affluent
Bay Area town of Hillsborough,
California, Grobman had been
in trouble for years. He’d begun
experimenting with drugs at
a young age, continuing as he
struggled with emotional issues.

When his parents sent him to
a child psychologist as a teen,
the doctor molested him (along
with many other young boys,
including several Jewish victims,
over the span of decades).

Stealing to fund his drug
habit into adulthood, Grobman
continued to get in trouble with
the law. In 2005 he ran afoul of
California’s “three strikes” law,
which suggests a 25-years-to-life
sentence for anyone convicted of
three felonies.

But in prison, Grobman
found a new lease on life. With
the help of a local Chabad rabbi,
he rediscovered his Judaism;
14 SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
Jon Grobman works with a rescue pup from Paws 4 Life K9 Rescue at
California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

and, with the help of some
four-legged friends, he found
an opportunity to practice
teshuvah, or repentance.

“Of all the classes I took in
prison, nothing impacted me
more than one on victim sensi-
tivity awareness,” he said. “It
connected me to what people
go through when they’re victim-
ized. I started connecting the
trauma that I went through to
the trauma of those around me,
and the trauma I caused others.

I began thinking about what I
can do with my life to make a
difference in the lives of those
around me, and began mento-
ring younger guys.

“I knew I was never getting
out, but I could help them for
when they did.”
In 2018, the extraordinary
happened: After 13 years in
prison, Grobman became the
state’s first-ever beneficiary of a
“Recall of Commitment” from
the California Department of
Corrections. Citing his excep-
tional behavior in prison and
evidence that he would be a
positive asset on the outside, the
state recommended that he go
free. Today, at 54, he is.

Since getting a second
chance, Grobman feels he has
been proving that judge wrong
every single day — something
that he says kicked into high
gear when he became involved
with Paws for Life. The Los
Angeles-based nonprofit gives
incarcerated men the chance to
train rescued shelter dogs with
behavioral problems who other-
wise would be euthanized.

The group began in 2014 as
an idea from prison leadership,
which partnered with a local
shelter. For the pilot program,
the shelter’s operator, Alex
Tonner, brought dogs into the
maximum-security California
State Prison, Los Angeles County,
in Lancaster, California, at the
behest of the prison’s warden.

That pilot program worked with
men who were a part of the
prison’s so-called “Honor Yard,”
reserved for lifers who have
demonstrated a commitment to
rehabilitation. Grobman was among
them. The story of that group,
including Grobman, was
recently featured in the short
documentary “Shelter Me: Soul
Awakened,” hosted by musician
John Legend and broadcast on
public television. Grobman was
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jon Grobman hugs his mother, Diane Grobman, at a Paws 4 Life
graduation ceremony.

also in the 2015 HBO documen-
tary “Toe Tag Parole: To Live
and Die on Yard A.”
In prison, Grobman hid the
fact that he was Jewish at first,
but over time he befriended
the only other Jewish man at
Lancaster. Rabbi Joseph Lazar,
the Jewish chaplain at the prison
in Lancaster and director of
the nearby Chabad of the High
Desert, came once a week to
wrap tefillin with him and teach
him about Jewish history for
most of his time there.

“In prison, he found his
better side that was buried deep
beneath all those layers that led
him to be incarcerated in the
first place,” Lazar said about
Grobman. “Over time, he made
his life about helping others.

He really learned how to have
compassion and empathy for
others inside, and could really
be a poster child for teshuvah.”
Grobman said learning with
Lazar was inspirational. “We’re
a resilient people, and learning
about our history, I saw the
connection to my own story,”
he said.

His job in the prison captain’s
office, running many of the
prison’s rehabilitation programs,
gave him a certain amount of
power and protection, which
allowed him to feel safe being
“out” as a Jew, even among
skinheads; he even became close
friends with one of them, he
said. When he was approached to
help start Paws for Life at the
prison, he agreed. At first, it was
hard to find 15 men willing to
sign up, partially because they
couldn’t believe dogs would be
allowed into prison. Grobman
ended up taking part, too; he
was a natural at dog training,
and eventually became the
program’s leader.

“Every person I was able to
have an impact on erased more
of what the judge said,” he said.

“I realized how good it feels to
help change someone’s life, and
to play a role in guiding people
in the right direction.”
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