Sent to prison for crimes in Contra Costa, they’re now trying to make amends from behind bars

SAN QUENTIN — Troy Makanski has not been back to Contra Costa County since the 2013 shootout with Pittsburg police that sent him to prison for life.

Since that night in 2013, Makanski has had years to think about the crimes and choices that led him to San Quentin, he said in a recent phone interview.

He admits he was a “nuisance” and a “selfish person” who earned a long prison stint in 2013 by shooting a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to detain him. The deputy’s life was spared when the bullet hit an armored vest, and Makanski was eventually convicted of attempted murder. But now he sees himself as someone trying to give back to Contra Costa County, where he committed the crime and can no longer visit because he’s incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.

Today, the work he does inside prison helps improve the community outside the prison — even drawing the attention and support of a juror who helped send him away years ago.

Makanski is one of several East Bay natives who’ve come up with the idea to “make amends” behind bars. It started with a simple project to gather one to two hygiene products from each prisoner inside and donate them to homeless people. That evolved into a recurring project: making furniture — mostly chairs and park benches — for a tiny-homes village in Richmond meant to provide transitional housing. The furniture project was run by Contra Costa natives, all of whom are serving life sentences inside San Quentin for serious crimes, and has inspired similar work by men from Alameda County, the group’s organizers say.

“It feels good to actually do things for somebody instead of the opposite, being a nuisance out there,” said Makanski, who racked up several prior felony cases in East Contra Costa for drugs, grand theft, and other property crimes. “It felt good to actually give back to my community, somewhere where I did a lot of destruction … I read somewhere that in order to change you have to replace negative thoughts and actions with good things.”

In the end, they delivered 16 chairs and four picnic tables, which the Tiny Homes executive director, Sally Hindman, called “truly inspirational.” She said the village on 23rd Street in Richmond contains transitional housing and a garden, aimed at supporting young people who are unhoused.

“These guys have truly been selfless, they’re thinking about how they can support young people doing better than they did,” Hindman said. “It’s really been so moving that they really took from their own commissary supplies to make five boxes of items … Here in California, we have close to 200 billionaires and here we have these San Quentin residents who have very little and they’ve gone the second mile to do something special.”

Building wood furniture inside prison has its own unique challenges.

The necessary tools — screw guns, saws, hammers — aren’t easy to come by in San Quentin, California’s oldest prison; the lockup has a long history of violence, gang wars, executions and murder. More recently, under a moratorium on executions instituted by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, the prison has been rebranded as a “rehabilitation center” intended for inmates — known in San Quentin as “residents” — who have shown promise.

Those incarcerated in San Quentin are given more time outside their cells than at most facilities, special events, educational programs and privileges, all part of the so-called California Model, championed by Newsom. It emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment, with the hope of getting prisoners ready for re-entry into society some day.

In February, Newsom spoke at the opening of a new Learning Center at San Quentin, which was built on the grounds of the old death row. Newsom cleared out the execution chamber and replaced it with a modern-looking building that’s equipped with a cafe and library, in the hopes of teaching college-level coursework to incarcerated people.

Still, every part of the furniture-building process had to be carefully checked. Supervisor approval was needed to dole out tools to the participants. The wood had to be delivered and inspected on its way in — and out.

There was also the matter of going to every cell to collect donations from the entire prison, which were also presented to the tiny homes center in Richmond. It was a “hectic” but worthwhile process, said Angelina Torres, the prison staffer who sponsored the effort.

“I had so much fun doing this and it was absolutely amazing to watch these guys support their outside community. I feel that this was a great opportunity for them to give back to their communities they once harmed … making a big difference in the lives of the youth,” Torres said.

That opportunity — to support their communities from afar, and to show young people that a better way is possible — carries a lot of meaning for inmates once convicted of serious violence.

Coby Phillips, a San Pablo native, had much to atone for: He was originally sentenced to 105 years to life for the 2004 murder of an Aryan Brotherhood drug dealer in Crockett. More recently, he earned praise from his trial judge, who noted Phillips’ recent confession and volunteer work at San Quentin, before re-sentencing him with a chance for parole.

“It is important to give back for me, due to I caused total chaos to my community for 40 years,” Phillips said in an interview.

Makanski’s actions have gotten attention not just from prison staff, like the program’s sponsor, but from one of the women who helped put him in prison. Pamela Abbey, a Methodist pastor in Walnut Creek, served on the jury that convicted him of attempted murder of peace officers, assault with a firearm and gun possession as a felon.

Years later, she reached out to him in a letter.

“Basically, I wanted to tell him we had passed judgment on what happened that night in Pittsburg, but that there was more to him than that, and that he should not define himself by that nor should he let others define him by it,” Abbey said in an email to this news organization.

They recommended books to each other and she’d suggested ways he could contribute to society from behind bars, she said. His involvement in the Making Amends group has been encouraging, she said.

“It has been a real joy to watch Troy grow and gain confidence in himself,” Abbey said. “He has worked hard.”