Fire Escape

We are thrilled to share our new showFire Escape https://wondery.com/links/fire-escape/, in partnership with Wondery https://wondery.com/! This 10 episode series, hosted by Anna Sussman, explores one woman’s journey as an incarcerated firefighter as she fights fire from behind bars -- defying a system intent on burying her under the weight of her worst moment. This episode contains strong language and mentions a car crash and its aftermath. Please take care while listening. Episode 1: The Crash How did Amika Mota go from a midwife and mother of three to a prisoner inside one of the largest women's prisons on Earth? Handcuffed to a hospital bed, awaiting trial, Amika tries to come to grips with the tragic crash that cost one man his life and took her away from her children. Inside the Chowchilla prison walls, she faces the "green cops" and the threat of solitary confinement. Outside the walls sits Firehouse Five, the home of the legendary crew of incarcerated firefighters called the Fire Girls. Thank you, Amika Mota, for your help and generosity in sharing your story with us!!! Fire Escape https://wondery.com/links/fire-escape/ is a production of Snap Studios at KQED https://www.kqed.org/ and Wondery https://wondery.com/. This series was created, written, and produced by Anna Sussman. For Snap Studios, our senior story editors are Mark Ristich and Nancy López. Marisa Dodge is our Director of Production. Original music by Renzo Gorrio, Dirk Schwarzhoff, and Doug Stuart. Doug Stuart also created our original theme song. Sound design and engineering by Miles Lassi. Special thanks to Pat Mesiti-Miller and theSF Fire Department https://sf-fire.org/employment-opportunities. For Wondery, our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our development producer is Eliza Mills. Clare Chambers, Lauren Dee and Mandy Gorenstein are our senior producers. Sarah Mathis is our managing producer. Our executive producers for Snap Studios are Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich. Executive producers for Wondery are Marshall Lewy, Morgan Jones, George Lavender and Jen Sargent. Binge all episodes of Fire Escape https://wondery.com/links/fire-escape/%20early and ad-free right now by signing up for Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Amazon Music with your Prime Membership. Start your free trial: www.wondery.com/links/fire-escape now. Season 15 - Episode 50 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Glynn Washington?

  Snap Nation, I am so humbled and thrilled. Because what you are about to hear is a project years in the making. Snap Studios' brand-new series, Fire Escape, explores the story of one woman, Amika Mota, and the aftermath of her biggest mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake it's possible to make. And we also follow her journey to seize back her own humanity in her own eyes and through the eyes of the people she cares about. Made in partnership with Wondery, Snap producer Anna Sussman leads us through this new 10-part series

• 0:54Glynn Washington?

  into the world of incarcerated female firefighters. And our real-life story includes mentions of her car crash and the aftermath. This is Fire Escape, Episode 1: The Crash.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Okay, let's start with, tell me everything you remember about your first call.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  It was fall during the really foggy, foggy season. And so the fog was really, really heavy. And so, you know, in the fire engine on the way to the call, we could hardly see, the fog was so thick. And we had heard that there was a cotton truck involved. It was like a four-lane highway. And it was a cotton truck that had been rear-ended by somebody else and kind of spun out. And the cotton bales fell off onto the freeway.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  The call came into Madeira County Station 5. It sits in the flatlands of California's Central Valley, lined with rows and rows of aging almond trees. The firefighters at Station 5 were the closest to the scene.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  You know, the routine is it comes in over, the call comes in over dispatch, and you get suited and booted real quick. So you get your full turnout gear on. It's your real heavy gear. And then we all jump in the engine. And I was nervous. It was my first, you know, car accident. And I know the captains and the chief were a little bit nervous about me coming to the scene, too.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Driving down the highway, Amika and the other women on the engine were quiet, lined up, four on each side of the truck, knees touching in the middle, with their helmets on their laps. The equipment on the engine was rattling, and they strained to hear the information over the radio. From what they heard, it was a very fragile scene.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  I was just talking to God, like, "Please let me be able to handle this. Please give me the strength to maintain some composure."

• 3:34Speaker 01

  And did you have the feeling of, like, feeling eyes on you?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. They were definitely like, you know, checking in with me on the way. And I remember Chief looking at me at one point, and he's like, "Honey, you look like a deer in the headlights."

• 3:51Speaker 02

  You know, we roll on scene, and I can see a man's head. And he already had that look of death, which is just that color, the shade of gray to his face. My heart is pounding at this point. It's like, okay, we don't, I don't know what else I'm gonna see.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  The other fire stations around the town were also called, and their fire crews were starting to show up.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  There's other engines on scene that have rolled up now, and firefighters that have been on the job for 20 years. And this was such a bad scene that there was a couple of the firefighters, the old head experienced firefighters, that were sick on the side of the road, literally sick. And so we're watching them. But our job as the first engine on scene and as the girls that do the dirty work is pulling the bodies. That's our job.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  So I approach with the captains and the other firefighters.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  And I can see in the back seat, two more bodies.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I'm praying, because I don't know what to do to kind of else. I feel like we have to keep some reverence to this moment, too, because it's so intense, this whole family that has passed.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Amika and the other firefighters cut open the car. Inside was a family of three, all adults. Carefully, they removed their bodies and placed them on the grass and covered them with yellow sheets.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I wasn't prepared for that being the beginning of my experience at the firehouse. And so at that point, it was like, I'm a baby firefighter. And I just, my first car accident was a triple fatality.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  We don't quite know how to take care of ourselves.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  We don't quite know how to get home and tell the other crew about what we just saw.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  It's just kind of a really silent ride home.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  The place Amika and the other firefighters call home is actually inside a prison. It's called Madeira County Station 5 CCWF. And it's a little brick firehouse with two engines and a handful of rolled hoses, a bunk room with 12 neatly made cots, a little open kitchen and a captain's office. And there, 12 incarcerated women train and work out, wash fire trucks and go to sleep, all inside the barbed wire fence of one of the largest women's prisons in the world, the Central California Women's Facility, CCWF.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  We're firefighters, but we're incarcerated, you know? And we lived with correctional officers still. We were not free.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  And our view into the prison gates reminded us of that, like, every day. You know what I mean? We couldn't look outside without seeing the towers and the barbed wire.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Is there a moment when they kind of lock you in?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, count time, we get counted the same as everybody else on the inside. And so, count time is when the sergeant comes through and everybody needs to be on their bunk and accounted for, basically.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  What was your number?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  X32168.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  From Wondery and Snap Studios at KQED, I'm Anna Sussman, and this is Fire Escape, the story of a woman whose world burned down, and then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. This is episode one, "The Crash."

• 8:21Speaker 01

  There were nearly 2,000 women locked inside the Central California Women's Facility at the time Amika entered. Women at all custody levels, women serving sentences for crimes ranging from embezzlement to homicide to possession of drugs. And when I first began interviewing women here about 20 years ago, they would each always tell me the same thing, about the shame they endured as women prisoners. They had let down their families, their parents, their children. They felt they had failed as women. It's something corrections officers taunt them about, something their kids, friends, parents make comments about.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I remember interviewing a woman under the shadow of the high prison wall and her saying casually, "Where women were not supposed to commit crimes. We're not supposed to be here." And that comment meant so many things about women who are convicted of crimes and imprisoned and what everyone thinks of them forever. When I first met Amika, it was clear she was very aware of this narrative.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  You broke the social contract with the whole world when you went to prison and left your kids. Like, that is the most real thing ever. Like, once you break this social contract, that's it. Like, that's just how it's perceived, right? From the world and by us when we internalize this. And regardless of all of the ways they feel about me, it's... There's no going back. There's none. I can only move forward.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  When Amika talked about the calls she responded to as an incarcerated first responder, it seemed hers was a story of defying a system intent on burying her under the weight of her worst moment. Out on the fire trucks, Amika and the other women are basically heroes, pulling children out of crumpled cars, climbing into burning homes with a hose and an axe, picking up elderly folks who had fallen in their kitchens, saving the lives of their jailers and their families. When they ride past schoolyards with fire truck lights spinning, kids cheer. And then they drive into the prison gates. Before Amika was inmate X32168,

• 10:54Speaker 01

  she lived in the mountains of Kern County, California, in a three-bedroom house.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  The front thing was a whole porch, all the way around the front, like a wraparound porch. Yeah, it was really beautiful. I loved that house. It was kind of a dream house.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Amika was 29 years old and she had three kids. And she had just moved to the countryside to try to slow down and focus on her kids and focus on being a mom.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Tehachapi is just these high desert mountains, a lot of rolling hills, really beautiful. You can see the shadows on the hills from the clouds.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  She'd walk her older kids to the school bus every morning. And on weekends, they'd go hunt for snakes or go to her son's football games.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I had big dreams of taking care of the home and having a garden and having nice meals. And I tried.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I liked the idea of it. I did. I had idealized the idea of living in a small town, taking care of my kids, taking care of my house.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And then, on a warm night in October 2008, driving down Lincoln Avenue in Cypress, California, everything changed.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  I do remember approaching the light that I ran and seeing the light. I don't remember if I saw it red, but I was gonna burn through it. And I didn't see any other vehicles. And then that was when I hit Mr. [BLEEP] car.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  It's like glimpses. I remember glimpses of coming into the hospital and waking up in between the surgery and seeing... I remember the families I would see in the hallway. And I remember waking up, and that's handcuffed to the bed. So there was sheriff deputies on one side of the bed and outside the door. So you could see two outside the door and one right next to me. And he let me know that I was that I was under arrest and that I had killed somebody in this accident. And I didn't believe him. I remember just not... It just didn't register. None of it felt real. It didn't feel true.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Like, what do you mean? I killed somebody? That's just sounded so crazy to me. And that was when it starts unfolding.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Amika had a broken pelvis, a lacerated liver, and a punctured lung. From the hospital, after multiple surgeries, she was led into a sheriff's van and taken to the Orange County jail.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  And the deputies just tossed me around. I was pushed into the shower and so felt my knees because I couldn't stand. I remember the shower coming on.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I had chunks of glass still stuck in my scalp. And as I was showering, those chunks were coming out of my hand. So that moment of showering was also this intense. I just, I was realizing all of it moment by moment.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  She was put into an isolation cell.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  And isolation, it was room 13. I won't forget that. The wing I was in, I could hear people screaming through the vents. My body was just in so much pain that it was, you know, on a thin mat, curled up with my wool blanket and just shivering.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Over the next days and weeks in the Orange County jail, she was moved into a medical unit to recover from the accident and the surgeries. And from there, she was moved to a two-person cell. She was allowed into a day room for two hours, where she could read the newspaper and shower. And then she was returned to her small cell. Eventually, she was given a public defender and told more details about the case against her. She could be convicted of second-degree murder. She waited in the county jail month after month. The only way she could have seen her kids would have been in a visiting room, separated by a thick glass window.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  You know, like, I couldn't imagine looking at my little six-year-old that was already like, could not make sense of where I was or why her mom was sitting in a box like that. And then like, I mean, I would like envision her like trying to touch me or, you know, like, no, that was not going to happen. Like, it felt, it felt more harmful, like I would be harming them more.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Than not seeing them?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Than not seeing them.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  She wrote letters home to her kids. This one was after she'd been locked up for six months, waiting for her trial.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  There was one, this one was like when I got sentenced. That was intense to read.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, um... This is to all three of them. So as far as I go, I pled guilty to the charges against me last Friday. I could have kept fighting them, but it felt like it was the right choice. Now there's what's called an open sentence. The judge gets to decide how much time to give me. The most time that I would do is 13 years and 8 months. With good time credit, it's actually just over 10 years. And that's the worst-case scenario. He could choose to give me less time. He chooses that on May 8th. That's the day I'm sentenced. It's a big day, and it won't be a lot clearer after that

• 17:16Speaker 02

  what the future holds for us. But either way, I'll be going to state prison, which is a whole different ballpark than county jail.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And then at the end of the summer, you guys should be able to come and visit for a weekend trip. I can't wait to hug all three of you. That sounds like heaven to me. So for that reason alone, I'm excited that I get to go to prison. Um, anyway, that's the scoop. May 8th is the big day. I love you so much.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  On May 8th, she was led to the courthouse one final time for her sentencing.

• 18:12Glynn Washington?

  Right after the break, Fire Escape continues. Stay tuned.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing, or-

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Politics.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Country music.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Hockey.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  Sex of bugs.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not-science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  And hopefully, make you see the world anew.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Radiolab: Adventures on the Edge of What We Think We Know.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:07Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to Episode One: A Fire Escape, produced in partnership with Wondery. And when last we left, Amika was sitting in the courthouse, about to receive her sentence.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  During the sentencing in Orange County, you know, I was shackled and sitting in a cage off the side of the judge. And so I could see his family. I could see my family. And, but it was through a glass panel and bars.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  We won't be using the victim's name in this story to protect his identity.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  His wife was in the courtroom. And I remember them talking about, you know, who he was. He was a pilot and flew in the Air Force here. So he'd done all this amazing stuff in his life and...

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I remember his, um, wife,

• 20:20Speaker 02

  you know, saying that he was just about to retire.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  And that they were gonna have, that she was so excited to have some time with her husband because he worked so hard his whole life. He's like a grandfather, a father. And I could relate to that, you know? He had done his life, he put in his dues. He daily grinding, day in, day out, taking care of his family. And he was just about to reap those rewards, you know? I had taken their whole life from them, basically. And so, that, I mean, that, that, sitting in the courtroom, it was like I took their life and I took my, my, you know, and I did the same to my family.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  It was like I wiped out two families completely. So it was a really [BLEEP] up feeling.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  I knew that sentencing was about what I was gonna walk away with, but I knew that that was their opportunity to address me. And so that was the most important piece of that, was allowing them to address me and make sure I looked them in the eye. Um, because I didn't want them to feel like I wasn't hearing them or taking what they were saying. I don't think they wanted to look at me much. You know, they shook their head and discussed often, like, didn't really want to look at me. But I felt like I owed it to them. Um, maybe, I don't know if that was the right thing to do.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I addressed the court at some point, too.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  And then that is like, what do you even say? What do you say? Because it feels like at that point, it's some performance. Like, you're supposed to say something that sounds like this. And like, none of it is even, it's like, I don't even know. So I don't remember what I said.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Amika's words to the court that day were this. "I've never had the chance to express how sorry I am to Mr. [BLEEP] family. No words will heal your hurt and bring back your father and your grandfather. But from the deepest part of my soul, I am so very sorry."

• 22:53Speaker 02

  At that point, I was hated. They were disgusted by me. And so that, there was no room for me to think about that either.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  To think about what?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  To think about

• 23:06Speaker 02

  any making of amends that I could do with the family or reaching. I mean, actually, I remember like, asking my attorney at one point, like, can I reach out to them? And he was like, absolutely not.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Amika waited for her sentence in the Orange County jail. She talked to her God. She talked to her kids on the phone, told them she didn't know when she'd be home. She talked to her victim.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  So what would you say?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  I would thank him, you know, for a chance, another shot. I still haven't talked about this.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I felt very grateful to be alive. And I feel like, um, like, um, I don't know. Like, I felt like I was allowed to live at the sake of his life.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Amika was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. She was sentenced to nine years and eight months in California State Prison.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  The thing that I...

• 24:22Speaker 02

  that always will stick with me is the judge just talking about, you know, letting me know that this was not about rehabilitation. This was about punishment.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  It wasn't like there was no hope, but kind of like that, like,

• 24:42Speaker 02

  it felt like there was a message in there that I was not redeemable.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Coming back from sentencing, I was walked through the jail. And when I was brought into my unit, you know, there was about 32 other women that I'd been with for that last year. So I walked in, everybody was waiting to see what had happened. And I fell to my knees and I screamed and, you know, 10 years.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Just 10 years, 10 years, 10 years.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  This one, I have so much to say to each of you, but I can't put it all on paper now. I'm waiting for the prison bus. They come every Sunday to pick up the girls that are waiting to go to prison. So any Sunday now I could go. I'll have a new address and a new prisoner number. Every day now is a day closer to seeing you all. That's what keeps me going every day. I feel strong and I know we will all be okay.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Amika began serving her 10-year sentence in the polka dot mu-mu women are dressed in when they go over the wall.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Over the wall is what they call it. And it's just going over the wall to the main yard in prison.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  The prison was over capacity. Some women were pregnant, some were living with HIV, some were in need of psych care or methadone. And people were triple bunked, some even housed in boiler rooms. Amika was walked to her dorm, shackled at the legs and the wrist and the waist, and handed a blanket and some clothes. One of the first things she did when she got there was she took a little paper envelope of pictures of her kids, Milo, Soleil, and Blossom. And she took a tube of toothpaste and put a little dot of toothpaste on the back of each picture and hung them up in her locker, where she could see them all the time.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  I could see their face. I could see their faces. I could smell them. I could feel their skin and their hair. That's what I would miss, you know?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Sometimes she would take the pictures out of her locker and lie on her bunk and just hold them.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  On my bunk, headphone up. There was a picture of my youngest. It was like a close-up shot of her face and just all her little freckles on her nose. And like, I would just, you know, kiss that picture and stare at her little freckles.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  She could finally have a contact visit. She'd been locked up for almost a year. And now that she was out of county jail and in state prison, she could visit them without a pane of glass in between them.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  I knew I was really close to being able to see my kids and hold them and hug them and, you know, in person.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Amika's papa was gonna bring the kids for a visit, all three of them. They'd been living with him at the time. And he booked a flight and packed their bags. And Amika thought she could hold on just a little bit longer and waited out until she got that visit. But waiting it out was harder than she realized. What Amika didn't yet understand was that inside prison, there's an invisible and changing set of rules, predicated often on the whims of the guards.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Like, in a month's period of time, I managed to get three write-ups. And I didn't feel like, you know, like I was acting out on the yard or acting crazy. Like, I just really, it didn't feel that way.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  A write-up is a punishment for breaking a rule. She said it was as if the COs were everywhere.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Like, you can't just go be. You can't just be. It's always, they want something.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Like, "No, you can't get your wash slot today because you looked at me funny." Or, "No, you can't get your phone call today because you didn't flirt back." You know, it's like every green suit wasn't human. He was part of this prison machine.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  She calls them "green cops" because they wore green uniforms. She says there were a few in particular she knew to avoid.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  There was one guy on the yard that was, you know, one of those ones that he was not horrible, but he was just really a kind of [BLEEP] by the book.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  She knew him as "the stickler." He had this graying hair and he was older, like in his mid-60s.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Uh, "Don't engage at all. Just kind of look at you like a piece [BLEEP]." Wouldn't make eye contact when you walked by.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Amika tried to navigate around him, keeping her head low. She'd go to the mess hall and the law library, her work assignment, the yard, and back to her cell. But she kept getting in trouble everywhere. And every time she'd get written up, the punishments would escalate. And then, one time, a few weeks in, she saw this thing happening in front of her. And she felt she had no choice but to get involved.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  I was getting ready to go in the shower, so I had my shower shoes on and a muumuu.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  There was this old woman that was a porter.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Porter is one of the jobs for incarcerated women. A porter would clean up after people.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And she was very old, like probably 70-something. Just very, like, old and frail. And it's like hard to even watch her work in prison. So she had taken my sidecar's towel from the shared showers.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And your sidecar is the person who sleeps in the bunk next to you.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, my sidecar flipped out and started cussing at this old woman. And I was like, "What?"

• 30:51Speaker 01

  And that's when Amika and her sidecar got into a fight, a big fight.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Throwing punches in the dayroom is like the worst place you could fight because you're basically in front of the cop shop.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And it was after the fight died down in her cell that a cop, a prison guard, came to take Amika away.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Some cop came to the door and basically was like, "Roll it up." I was classified as a failure to program. And I ended up being, you know, put in isolation.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  She was given 40 days in solitary confinement. And as the green cop marched her across the yard towards the isolation unit, he casually mentioned, "There goes your contact visit with your kids. They can still come down to the prison, but no contact." He said she'd have to look at them through a glass window.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  We had a date. We had a date on the calendar when they were coming. And it was, it was like, you know, every call, "I get to see you, mama. You know, I get to see you in a few weeks." So we're all counting down.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I asked the sergeant to please let me call my kids, or my papa. I had to call papa and tell him that I couldn't visit.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Amika still felt it would do more harm than good to have her kids visit through a pane of glass. It had been a year and a half. There would be no in-person visit. She wouldn't get to see her kids. They wouldn't be able to touch her or hug her.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I mean, there became a point when I realized

• 32:45Speaker 02

  that being the type of mom I wanted to be to my kids from the inside was impossible.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  So it was very much like this reckoning for me of who I was as a human being.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  I had gone inside as a mama,

• 33:14Speaker 02

  someone that had integrity. And now I had taken someone's life.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And it was a new version of me that I had to figure out.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Who I was now.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  If she was ever going to be able to figure that out, she'd need to find some way over that wall.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I always wondered what it was like on that side because we knew they lived right outside the gate. And so it's kind of this other world that just isn't imagine it's like, what, where are they? What are they doing? Just gave me this picture of what, what it would look like, and I wanted it.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Fire Escape is a production of Snap Studios and Wondery. This series was created, written, and produced by me, Anna Sussman, and I want to thank Amika Mota for her help and generosity in sharing her story with us. For Snap Studios, our senior story editors are Mark Ristich and Nancy Lopez. Marisa Dodge is our director of production. Original music by Renzo Gorrio and Doug Stewart. Doug Stewart also created our theme song. Sound design and engineering by Miles Lassie. For Wondery, our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our development producer is Eliza Mills. Claire Chambers, Lauren D., and Mandy Gorenstein are our senior producers, and Sarah Mathis is our managing producer. Our executive producers for Snap Studios are Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Executive producers for Wondery are Marshall Louis, Morgan Jones, George Lavender, and Jen Sargent.

• 34:56Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Amika Mota, for sharing your story, and thank you, Anna Sussman, for bringing it to us. You can follow Fire Escape on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.

• 35:24Glynn Washington?

  Now, after the break, I sit down with Anna for a behind-the-story deep dive into Fire Escape. Stay tuned.

• 35:51Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Fire Escape episode. We're celebrating the release of Fire Escape, a brand new 10-part storytelling series from KQED Snap Studios, and wondering that we cannot wait for you to hear. Anna Sussman, the producer of the series, is in the studio with me right now. Thank you so much for taking us into this story.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, Glenn. I can't believe that I'm here talking to you about this. Thank you so much for having this conversation.

• 36:19Glynn Washington?

  We are so thrilled to have you. Anna, this is a story you've been working on forever, for years, a story of the heart. Why did you want to dive into this particular narrative?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I have been reporting on this firehouse at the Central California Women's Facility for about 20 years, and I think that the work that they do is unlike any other story in the world, honestly. To be an incarcerated person and going into the community as a hero, as a first responder, and interfacing with folks as their lives are on the line, and then coming back into prison, I think is a story I could live in forever. And it's also a little personal to me. I have incarceration in my family, and I'm always interested in stories about what incarceration does to people.

• 37:08Glynn Washington?

  The story is through the eyes of Amika Mota, who takes us with her over 10 episodes into a lot of different places. They're self-reflective in a way that most people recoil from. Why did she want to tell you this story? Why did she want to take away the veil?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think she's somebody who's been labeled a lot of things throughout her life, and I think she really knew the value of breaking out of those boxes, both for herself and for folks listening to her story, and that she knows she's never all one thing, and none of us are ever all one thing, but that's what makes a story... Compelling, and that's what makes our lives compelling, is that we are complicated and dimensioned and not what you think we are. And she knows that. Yeah, and I think she trusts that and that the listener can hold multiple things about a person in their mind at once, which is a scary thing to trust.

• 38:04Glynn Washington?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Because that is a lot of trust.

• 38:06Glynn Washington?

  She is trusting you, and I appreciate how Amika allows us to see her at her very worst moment. She allows us to see her warts. She allows us to hear her laugh. Do you think that the world that we live in does not accept witnessing joy from someone who's made a mistake of this magnitude?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yes, myself included. I did have to catch within myself some beliefs I had about how much joy she was entitled to, absolutely.

• 38:46Glynn Washington?

  Wow, say more.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  I mean, if somebody took the life of someone in your family.

• 38:51Glynn Washington?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  And you saw them, you know, if you saw them experiencing joy too soon, you could relate to that as being not okay, right? Hey, too soon. It feels like you're not taking it seriously enough. It feels like you're not in your pain enough. I think that's a very normal reaction. But at what point do we allow people to reemerge as humans and the full spectrum of humans, including joy and giggling and being silly and making more mistakes and all of the things that humans are allowed to be? And I think the thing that really clicked for me was when she says, you know, "I'm no good to my victim's family if I have to stay in my pain forever. I'm no good to anybody," right?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Like, what good is that human who just has to stay in a place of shame forever? Right? So if I want people who have hurt people to stop doing that, which I do, then I have to allow them to be full.

• 39:49Glynn Washington?

  What's your north star? What are you looking for when you're building this narrative?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  The point to me that I had to keep in mind was not how does Amika reconcile herself with her crime? It's how do we as listeners reconcile ourselves to the idea that she is fallible like us? And we had to just confront that all the way through the making of the story. You know, there's a thing about likable characters, right? You need your characters to be likable, otherwise people tune out, right? They turn against the story. But she's a human, and humans aren't always likable, right? We're terribly unlikable a lot of the time. And she's a human who's taken a life. So then, does that mean that we have to treat her differently in the details that we give

• 40:38Speaker 01

  and the choices that she makes and what we show and what we don't show?

• 40:41Glynn Washington?

  What changed you while making this series? What changed about you while making this series?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Did you see me change at all?

• 40:50Glynn Washington?

  Um, yeah, I think so. You became more deliberate. It made you focus on the joy of having your daughters and being able to parent your daughters in a way that you know that Amika couldn't. Is that fair?

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's totally fair. You know, there's lots of ways in which her story terrified me. A lot of the women I interviewed were in for DUI. Those that weren't were all eventually in for things that you know could happen to anybody given the wrong circumstances. And so, yeah, the idea of being taken away from my children, it terrified me. And the idea of my children, you know, making a terrible mistake later in their life terrifies me. And so, yeah, I think that the fragility of life is a huge part of this series, and it was something I lived with very intimately during the whole making of it.

• 41:55Glynn Washington?

  We kind of got at it a little bit, but how do you feel altered after having devoted this much of your life to telling the story?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  One of the kind of concerns we had about the story was the fact that her crime was a DUI, and so it had this kind of pall of accident instead of intentionality over it and that people might think...

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Well, she's not like other people who committed more premeditated or more overtly violent crimes. And she says, no, I am the same. I'm exactly the same because I know that all of those crimes happened in a moment of weakness. And I had to ask myself, do I ever lose my temper? Yes, I lose my temper. I lose my temper. Right? And I tell myself, I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to lose my temper again. So I think when she said that, that she's not any different and that she understands that all of those crimes happened in a moment when people lost it,

• 42:59Speaker 01

  that made me rethink my mercy for all the crimes.

• 43:04Glynn Washington?

  Okay. Very interesting. And what Amika said in the story we just heard was that this was not about rehabilitation. This was about punishment. That's what she heard. And I think that that's where a lot of people are. I think immediately after something like that, that's where I would be.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  But that's fair. That's why we have a system of justice and not a system of vigilantism. Right? Of course, you want to go out and punch somebody out. Like, of course you do. But this is why this is in place instead, because it's supposed to be more measured.

• 43:41Glynn Washington?

  Do you think that justice was served?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  I think that because of the person she is, including the amazing mother that she had and the community that she had, Amika was able to come through her experience of incarceration as a fuller human being than she was before she committed her crime. But I don't think that our system of justice generally does that to folks. I think it does more harm to everybody.

• 44:18Glynn Washington?

  What was the best part? What's your favorite part of the series?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  When I was in high school, I used to watch this reality TV show called Rescue 911.

• 44:30Glynn Washington?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Do you remember that show?

• 44:31Glynn Washington?

  I totally remember Rescue 911, yes.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  I loved that show because I think there's something about being in someone in their moment of real need, real vulnerability, right? Like somebody, even if they've fallen on their dining room floor and they can't get up for two days and ambulance comes to get them, or their house has burned down, everything in it, there's something that, and it just, those moments make people so raw and so human and so vulnerable and so all the things that to be with them in those moments, I find really alive.

• 45:08Glynn Washington?

  Intense, revelatory. You see the real person.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:11Glynn Washington?

  Yes.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I like being in those moments.

• 45:17Glynn Washington?

  Anna Sussman, thank you so much. You can hear the rest of Amika Mota's journey through the California incarceration system on Fire Escape, the 10-part series from Wondery and KQED Snap Studios. Anna, we appreciate you.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Glenn, I appreciate you believing in this project and everybody at Snap Judgment for all of the work that they put into it. It's really been an amazing team effort. Thanks so much for having me.

• 45:54Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Anna Sussman. Thank you, Amika Mota. You can follow Fire Escape on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 46:14Glynn Washington?

  Now, if you missed even a moment, know that Snap Judgment Storytelling Podcast awaits your ears each and every week on Walk the Shadow with our evil twin podcast, Spooked, or dive into amazing tales from the African continent with Mine Your Own, with Lapita Nyongo, storytelling with hearts, storytelling with soul. All available wherever you get your podcasts. KQED in San Francisco, at Snap's Orbiting Hall of Justice, and this is not the news.

• 46:50Glynn Washington?

  No way this is the news. In fact, you could spend the rest of your days counting the ways. This is even better than the news. And you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is P R X.