Following the passing of Victoria Yarbrough-Gamble on August 10th, we want to reflect on and celebrate Victoria’s life and accomplishments.
Victoria was from Hobbs, New Mexico, where she was known by her friends and family as a beacon of compassion and inspiration.
She was instrumental in the founding of the NM Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (NMCFSY) which championed the passage of New Mexico’s “Second Chance Bill,” ending the possibility of life without parole for children in our state. It’s also given hope to so many people, giving them a real chance at early parole eligibility. Already, this has led to the release of nine people (and counting!) and given life to our mission of building bridges for people to go from serving life to living it.
The following tribute to Victoria was written by (De)serving Life client, John Gamble, who is a Ministry Mentor at Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas, NM, where he’s serving a life sentence for a crime he committed as a child.
The Hero You Never Saw
A Tribute To Victoria
Who do you see when you hear the word hero? Maybe you see Superman. Maybe you see Batman. Maybe you see Thor. Or perhaps you have a different kind of hero and you see Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, or Jalen Hurts. Whatever direction you go, you prolly wouldn’t see a 4 feet 11 inches girl who spent part of her day in a wheelchair. That’s not what you typically see on the big screen, the red carpet, or on a box of Wheaties. But she is what I see when I hear the word hero. She didn’t come from a comic book. She wasn’t a character from Marvel or DC. She was a real person and she made real change for a lot of people who needed real help. Her name was Victoria.
I met Victoria in 2017 and we became friends. It didn’t take long for me to want to become more than friends. Two letters was all it took for me to want to spend my life with her. Two years later we got married. She went all the way to Kansas City to make it happen. Just another way she fought for us. In that second letter she said, “I’m willing to go through the pain to see if there is anything between us. I’m sure whatever this is won’t be easy, but nothing worth having comes easy.” I saw her heart. I could see she was a hero.
To everyone who Victoria fought for:
Even though she was never locked up, in some sense Victoria knew what it was like to be in prison. She battled muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and other health problems. However, none of these things ever stopped her from living her life. She wasn’t a victim. She wasn’t a complainer. She was a fighter. She learned to walk at 20 years old. Based on her attitude, character, and perspective, you would have never been able to guess all the battles she had to face every day.
Victoria believed in me. Victoria believed in you. She believed in us. She believed we were worth fighting for. She believed we were worth saving. She couldn’t just leave us to our fates, she had to make sure we had a second chance. So Victoria fought. She fought when she was tired. She fought when she was sick. She fought when she was angry. She fought when she was crying. She fought to rally the community, representatives, senators, district attorneys, parole boards, coalitions, all the way to the governor’s office. In one of the last letters Victoria sent me, she said, “Never stop dreaming, hoping, and loving-For the both of us.”
That is my message to all of you. Even when you are tired, sick, angry, crying… never stop dreaming, hoping, and loving. Keep fighting for your future, because now you have a second chance. Maybe you were abused. Maybe you were molested. Maybe you were a drug addict. Maybe you were around gangs. Maybe you got lost in all of that and did terrible things, made horrible choices, and ended up in prison for 60 years. But like Victoria, we don’t have to let our past or circumstances define us. We don’t have to be victims or complainers. We have a second chance. We have a chance to leave all that behind us and fight for a better future.
You have that chance because of The Hero You Never Saw.
To Victoria and everyone else at (De)serving Life who are fighting for us: we see you and we thank you.
In loving memory, your Hubby, John Gamble.
*Forever & A Day*