02 Jun 2024 Maumelle business gives workers with felonies a second chance

By Tammy Keith

Will LaRue was thinking about going to law school until COVID-19 hit, so instead he joined his family’s metal-fabrication business and seamlessly combined two careers with his program to hire felons.

“I have a passion for criminal justice,” LaRue said. The 25-year-old Conway native graduated in 2020 from the University of Arkansas with a degree in business management and took the LSAT, but the pandemic started.

 “It was a tough time to be in the job market,” he said. He had worked at TFC Inc. in North Little Rock, which his father, Wayne LaRue, bought in 2013, on weekends and during summers through high school and college and started there full-time. “I didn’t find a whole lot of meaning in it,” he said.

Not only was the pandemic a hindrance to LaRue’s career plans, it impacted the workforce at TFC, he said.

In 2021, he got the idea to hire felons—a group most employers would shun—to work in the company. He was partly inspired by the book “Just Mercy,” in which the author, Bryan Stevenson, said, “We are all worth more than the worst thing we’ve done. The past is the past.”

LaRue took that to heart. “We partner with reentry organizations and bring in offenders; no background checks. If you can do the job, we’ll give you a chance. It worked out really well, timing wise, because we really, really needed labor,” he said. “It came out of necessity, but it continued because of my passion for it.”

Half of TFC Inc.’s employees—15 of the 30—are currently or formerly incarcerated people; some are supervisors in the company. Employment can be for a few months or indefinitely.

LaRue said Blake Johnson is one of his best employees. Johnson was in prison for 2 1/2 years on drug and theft charges and said that when he was released, no one wanted to hire him. He went through the Hidden Creek reentry program and got a job at TFC Inc., but he has stayed past his graduation. “A lot of jobs look at your background and judge you immediately. Will said he didn’t care about my past life. All he cared about was what I’m trying to do from here on out. That really meant a lot to me,” he said.

LaRue said Johnson, who has worked there about a year, is a press brake operator, “one of our most advanced positions in the shop.”

Johnson said LaRue gave him much more than a job.

“It’s given me hope, you know? It’s shown me another way of life. Every day, I have a smile on my face; that’s the energy I want to bring. It gives me a sense of gratitude every day. I’m never late; I don’t miss work. My drive is through the roof. I have stability in my life, a tremendous amount of stability. At the end of the day, I’m full of life and joy; at the end of the day, my mind is not on drugs,” he said.

Dwight Pridgeon, reentry coordinator for the city of Little Rock, sings LaRue’s praises.

“He’s the individual I can go to when all doors are closed, and he will hire. Thanks to Will LaRue, who believes in second and third chances. Color doesn’t matter. Black or green, we bleed the same blood. I’m speaking about a brother who is willing to go an extra mile. He doesn’t judge,” Pridgeon said.

LaRue said one of his favorite parts of his job as TFC’s business development officer is something that wouldn’t be possible if he were a lawyer. “I’ve done everything from pay an employee’s bail to go to court with them. I’ve paid a fine they didn’t know about. That’s where I feel I’m making a difference that other people are not willing to make.”

He said he has never had a reentry employee steal anything and it’s “rare that it doesn’t work out.”

It’s definitely working out for Johnson. “Will and this job turned my life around,” he said. “They gave me a chance, and sometimes that’s all people need is another chance. This job has made me hold my head up high and realize I have worth in me.”

It put LaRue’s life on a different trajectory, too. “It’s what gave me purpose in my job. I’ll always give reentry employees a shot.”

Pridgeon says LaRue and the program are making a profound difference.

“If we had more Will LaRues around, imagine the shape this world would be in,” he said.