Up until a few years ago, Jodi Whitt’s trips to the Shawnee County jail in Topeka, Kansas, began with an arrest and an anxious wait in a bare intake cell for up to 72 hours. Her incarcerations lasted 30 days or so, until an abrupt release without resources or support — nothing but the clothes on her back. She’d fall back into her addiction, return to the jail, repeat the cycle. “I spent years in and out of the jail — it wasn’t like I had one stay here,” she says. “I had a revolving door of incarceration for over 20 years.”
Things began to change in 2019. She got sober, committed to treatment, and pushed herself to try new things, like enrolling in a University of Kansas technology education program for formerly incarcerated women. A few years later, she made a decision that would change her life — and the lives of so many other women. “I wanted to go back into the jail and help the women, because that’s where I needed the help,” she says. “That’s where I needed the intervention.”
Little did Whitt know where that sentiment would lead her. A local Rotary club formed in 2021 to combat human trafficking, and its members asked her to join their mentorship program to help women transition to life outside jail. As Whitt’s involvement grew, the club established itself as a key reentry service provider in Shawnee County, fundamentally interrupting the cycle of incarceration for many women there.
Now, most mornings Jodi Whitt starts her day by doing her hair and makeup, feeding her cat and then driving to the jail, where her desk is decorated with affirmational quotes, a ceramic white unicorn and a small, blue-fringed Magic of Rotary banner. Surrounded by office supplies and resource handbooks waiting to be delivered, she opens her laptop and begins a new day — not as an incarcerated woman but as the person who helps and supports them.
Perched on a swivel chair, Whitt takes it all in from the comfort of her cozy office. “Sometimes I don’t believe it’s true,” she says. “Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life now.”
Patti Mellard is a longtime Topekan with an infectious Midwestern supermom energy. The Rotary Club of Community Action Against Human Trafficking is her passion project, formed to fight this widespread scourge through prevention education, survivor assistance and advocacy. Topeka Mayor Spencer Duncan aptly describes Mellard as “stubborn in the right way, doesn’t take no for an answer, doesn’t let things get her down.”
Human trafficking is the term used when an individual or group uses force, fraud or coercion to compel another person into some kind of labor, which can include the commercial sex trade. There are misconceptions that it doesn’t take place in the United States or that foreign-born individuals are the only victims. But human trafficking can happen to anyone, anywhere — including Topeka, Kansas.
Mellard wasn’t thinking about the jail when she started the club, one of a growing number of cause-based Rotary clubs in the U.S. dedicated to fighting human trafficking. But a few of the club’s early members told Mellard that when women were released from the Shawnee County jail, vulnerable and unsure of where to go, traffickers were often waiting for them in the parking lot. At prisons and jails across the country, traffickers search online records to identify targets and track their release dates, promising women housing or money and sometimes even posting their bail as leverage.
That realization was the inception of what is now the club’s largest project: Intersection to Care, which began with the support of a Rotary Foundation global grant in 2022. The initiative has effectively transformed the way the Shawnee County jail operates. What began as a program providing basic resources and mentorship has grown to include classes in technology, movement and meditation, health and art therapy, as well as supportive housing and on-demand doula services. All told, Intersection to Care has assisted more than 1,000 women since 2022, including 134 in the first five months of this year.
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With the help of Whitt, Intersection to Care perfected its system of supporting women the moment they leave the gate. Now, she or other volunteers wait outside to take newly released women to safe housing. Sometimes the urgency of their task stares them right in the face. Once, when Whitt was waiting in the parking lot, a trafficker was standing right beside her, lying in wait for the woman about to be released. “I was not scared of him,” says Whitt. When the woman emerged from the jail, Whitt put her into her car and drove the woman to safety.
Perhaps no American institution better reflects the vulnerabilities of its community than the local jail. “The jail is the gatekeeper to the criminal justice system,” as Brian Cole, director of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections, puts it. He says that its purpose is to ensure safety and security while people await sentencing into the state or federal prison system or until they are released (if no charges are filed). But that’s not all that jails do. Increasingly, they have become way stations for people experiencing mental illness, addiction, homelessness or other vulnerabilities. Are jails equipped to address those needs? Cole’s answer is an immediate no.
When Cole started working as an officer at the jail 37 years ago, there were six women incarcerated at Shawnee. Today there are more than 100 — a surge that reflects a national trend. Between 1980 and 2023, the number of incarcerated women in the United States ballooned by over 600 percent, driven in large part by tougher drug sentences. Adding to the increase is the fact that jail or prison facilities frequently lack gender-responsive care and reentry services. “I hate to say this,” Cole says, “but there was never any care for females in jails.”
In Topeka, changing the culture around incarceration and reentry into society has been several years in the making. In 2018, native Topekan Kristen Shook began working for Mirror Inc., a local nonprofit that assists formerly incarcerated individuals as they reintegrate into the community. She helped develop the Shawnee County Reentry Council in 2021 and launched a podcast, Reentry Reframed, to share people’s stories about leaving prison and jail. “It’s been transformative in helping shift cultures and our community as a whole, because now [former inmates’] voices are at the table and they’re the ones who are providing insight,” Shook says.
In 2022, Shook invited Whitt onto the podcast for an interview that led to a new collaboration. She asked Whitt: “What are your hopes? … Your next year, two years, five years, what would you like to see as your impact?” Whitt’s answer inspired Shook: She said that she wanted to help women in the jail. Two weeks later, Shook learned about the Rotary club’s plans to start a mentorship program. Shook, Whitt and Mellard connected and formed a powerhouse trio working closely with Cole and other jail staff to bring Intersection to Care to the facility.
At first, Mellard and other members of the Rotary club provided supplies to women inside the jail, such as composition journals, ear plugs, reading glasses and community resources packets. They also assembled supplies to distribute to women upon release, things like food vouchers, bus passes, cell phones, and care kits full of clothing and personal hygiene items — all of which are still a core part of what Intersection to Care offers.
But in January 2023, with the launch of the mentorship program, Intersection to Care became a more hands-on service provider. Club members completed trauma-informed training to serve as mentors to women before and after their release. The pairs meet at least once a week inside the jail, with mentors offering ongoing emotional support. Mentors have picked their mentees up from the jail and helped facilitate resources upon their release. The program has since offered mentoring services to more than 120 incarcerated women and has trained 17 Rotarians to be mentors, including Whitt.
The initiative grew quickly from there. Mellard has the distinct ability to identify a need and deftly network until she can fill it. “We were thinking we needed a health class,” she says, “and a Rotarian’s wife was at the Shawnee County Health Department. I reached out to her to see if she would do it, and she was on board right away.”
That person was Shelley Ramos, health promotion coordinator with the department, who also knew Shook through her job. “If anybody else had said, ‘Would you like to go into the Shawnee County jail and do this?’ I’d think they were crazy,” says Ramos. “But because it was Patti and Kristen, who I trust and have faith in, I knew it was the right thing.”
Ramos began leading a class in 2024 that addresses common health concerns among incarcerated women, including addiction and domestic violence, while also celebrating milestones like birthdays. She coaches them on the reentry process and on how to utilize county health resources. The work even led to changes at the health department. “We’re creating a survey so we know what is working and what we need to do to change, so that everything can be a measurable outcome,” Ramos says. The department now visits the men’s quarters at the jail four times a year, and Ramos is advocating to introduce regular classes.
There are many more examples of the organic, grassroots growth that’s come to define Intersection to Care. Mellard’s daughter suggested supporting new mothers; that resulted in a partnership with the Topeka Doula Project, which visits women at the jail. A woman who heard about Intersection to Care reached out to Mellard to express interest in leading a movement class; she now visits the jail twice a week, playing upbeat music from her phone while leading exercise routines. Whitt, who took the University of Kansas’s technology class early in her sobriety, became determined to get those classes into the jail. In late 2023, the club purchased laptops to make it happen, and Whitt started teaching the class the next year.
Linda Swopes, who is currently incarcerated and has battled a long-term addiction, learned about program offerings from Whitt. “I thought it was BS,” Swopes says. But she took a chance with the technology class. Before long she had joined the health class and the art class, too. “It’s like the people here, they take your brokenness and put it together,” she says, breaking down into tears. “They tell you, you can do this and you’re worthy of it, even though you don’t feel that way.”
“I will let you know that it’s not happening at any other jail I’ve ever been to,” says Racheal, another of the jailed women, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her privacy. Many women expressed similar surprise at receiving this kind of support inside a jail. Racheal participated in all the classes and became a peer mentor for the technology class. “The programs are on your own terms and what you’re willing to put in,” she says. “There’s no forcing.”
Two crucial components ensured the success of Intersection to Care. First, in the summer of 2024, the project hired Whitt as a resource liaison and secured approvals for her to work inside the jail. Her lived experience was key. “We had three other women in Jodi’s role, and it wasn’t the right fit,” explains Mellard. “Those people had a master’s, they had a license.”
But Whitt had something they didn’t. “I had a criminal record,” she says, and that helped her connect with the women. Time and time again, the women reflected on what it meant to see Whitt in a leadership role. “You know, she’s been in her addiction and she’s been clean,” says Swopes. “She reached back and she grabbed me, and she told me that I have a choice and that I’m worth this.”
Next, Intersection to Care expanded its focus on housing support. “I would leave here and have nowhere to go — the only place I had to go was the dope house,” Whitt says of when she was in and out of jail. “I really had no safe, stable place and no real support, and that’s why I was stuck in those revolving doors.”
In January 2025, the Rotary club received a $60,000 grant to subsidize housing for women within the Oxford House of Kansas, a network of self-run, self-supported recovery homes. That March, they hired Alexis Tracy — a formerly incarcerated woman who went through the Intersection to Care programs and stayed at an Oxford House — as housing coordinator. They have since helped more than 75 women secure housing after leaving jail.
Tracy helps women apply to live in an Oxford House home while still incarcerated, then supports them as they set up their lives out of jail. She is also part of the Intersection to Care mentorship team and a member of the Rotary club. Tracy never imagined herself as a Rotarian. “Until I went to jail,” she says, “I didn’t know that they were doing this kind of work.”
Mellard subsidizes Rotary membership dues for Intersection to Care mentors and the women coming home from jail, so the club, which now has about 60 members, is a mix of formerly incarcerated women, longtime Rotarians and others in Mellard’s network. By becoming Rotarians, she says, “it helps them understand our whole mission.”
The mission, and the diverse group of Topekans it has engaged, was on full display one evening this March in the city’s arts district. Healing in Color: Stories of Strength & Hope, a display of artwork from women participating in Intersection to Care’s trauma-informed arts program, attracted a packed house that included Mayor Duncan. Mellard had approached him to explain the importance of the project’s work when he was running for office.
Jennifer Montgomery, a Rotary Peace Fellow who started the art class in 2025, offered the keynote address. A formerly incarcerated woman with artwork on display shared remarks. In the crowd, Director Cole and other jail staff mingled with formerly incarcerated women. Mellard, Shook and Whitt moved among the crowd strategically: They secured approval from Cole for a pizza party at the jail that evening and spoke to the mayor about their program’s success and the need for more funding to continue supportive housing work. (A few days later, a local women’s charitable organization awarded them $10,000 to accomplish that.)
Whitt was invigorated — “I spoke with the mayor!” — but also exhausted: “I’m ready to go home and sit with my cat.” As attendees dispersed, she remembered a woman would be released from the jail the next day, and she confirmed with a staffer that everything was in place to receive her. “We’ve got this down to a science now. It’s all set in place,” Whitt says. “The ones who were released months ago are now waiting for the ones being released now.”
Whitt, who has stood at the exit gate many times now, mulled the hurdles ahead for this woman and hoped for her success. Then, she posed for a final group selfie at the art show, said her goodbyes, got in her car and went home. Whitt would be back at the jail tomorrow, where she’d recount the evening to the incarcerated women who could not attend — and then she would help one more woman come safely home.
If you are in the U.S. and suspect someone is being trafficked, please call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. In Canada, call the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010.
This story was produced in collaboration with Rotary magazine, the official publication of Rotary International.