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Counselor apologizes: Not an ex-con after
Sacramento Bee, Dec. 19, 2002
http://www.sacbee.com/
He stepped onto the property with all eyes upon him, through a heavy steel security door and past an overhanging sign that said “new beginnings.”
Jim Bonacci, a counselor and role model to the same people he wound up deceiving, was back to make everything right, or try to. This once-proud and imposing figure of 290 pounds now strode with his head bowed, his shoulders stooped, a cap pulled low over his brow.
A week ago, the 52-year-old walked off his job in shame at Quinn Cottages, the highly touted facility that provides transitional housing and treatment for the homeless.
Bonacci returned Tuesday night to tell a crowd of about 60 people that he was not nearly as awful as he made himself out to be. He was not the violent thug, the hell-raising, gun-toting ex-con, but merely a man living one very big lie.
Bonacci’s predicament, which shocked residents at the residential facility on North A Street, appeared to turn reason on its head. He was in danger of losing his job because he concocted a past that was worse — not better — than it really was.
“I have been living a lie,” he told the hushed crowd seated in the community meeting room. “I am truly sorry for violating the trust that you’ve shown me.”
But those who know the conflicting cultures of life on the street and life in recovery say Bonacci was trapped somewhere in between, boasting of violent stints in prison that made him seem tougher to some and more inspirational to others.
Bonacci vanished from his job at the complex last Thursday after The Bee, which was preparing a story about his apparent transformation from career criminal to counselor, tried to confirm some of the harrowing tales he spun during lengthy interviews.
Bonacci’s story, the way he told it, seemed almost too dramatic to be true. Sentenced to 10 years in state prison in 1971 for assault with a deadly weapon, Bonacci said, he was forced to fall in with the Aryan Nations behind bars, where he learned to hate African Americans and other minorities.
After a series of other violent crimes and prison sentences — he told some he had shot two police officers — Bonacci claimed he had cleaned up his act. Now, of all things, the one-time white racist was a counselor whose boss at Quinn Cottages was an African American woman.
But things began to unravel as The Bee went to check the 30-year past and journey toward racial acceptance he’d recounted in such detail.
When asked for more information to check his criminal history, Bonacci hesitated and replied, “Do you have to?”
The State Department of Corrections had no record that he had ever served time. Still, Bonacci insisted he had, telling The Bee and his now-curious bosses that he would retrieve the paperwork himself. He left work and seemingly vanished, refusing to answer his front door and ignoring calls to his cell phone for five days.
Local records showed Bonacci had a 90-day suspended sentence for a first-time drug possession offense in 1997, but nothing more serious.
Bewildered residents at Quinn Cottages, many of whom have been to prison and looked to Bonacci as an inspiring success story, seemed willing to hear his explanation Tuesday night.
“I am not the convict you think I am,” he told them. “Actually, I’m a con man, a hustler. I’ve always been fortunate enough to beat the system. I’ve never spent a day in prison.”
Then someone in the audience shouted, “I love you, Jim.” And another called out, “Are you going to be here tomorrow to help me with my recovery?”
Soon, many in the crowd were on their feet applauding. Several praised him for showing the courage to return and apologize.
Robert Tobin, executive director of Sacramento Cottage Housing, said forgiveness and second chances are key elements to recovery, but so is “rigorous honesty.” Nevertheless, it appeared Bonacci’s dramatic apology may have saved his job, which he has held for about a year.
“This is a problem, and it will take time to resolve,” said Tobin, whose office runs Quinn Cottages with a combination of federal and local money. “This is step one. He’s got to earn the trust with his people day in and day out.”
As he headed to his car parked on the other side of that heavy steel door, Bonacci said he felt as if years of pressure had been washed away with all the lies. Those lies had become his life, and now he had laid it to rest.
“The fact that they want me back is overwhelming,” he said.
On Wednesday, Bonacci was back on the job, working on a new beginning of his own.
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