ST. LOUIS — Kirk Hough enjoyed his first cup of Starbucks coffee in 16 years. The store on South Grand Boulevard was out of the dark roast he craved, so the barista gave him another coffee for free. He put $3 in the tip jar.
Hough doesn’t have many vices. He doesn’t drink or smoke or take drugs. That makes him relatively unique among the clients of the Criminal Justice Ministry, a nonprofit that helps place men and women in housing when they leave prison. Hough qualifies for a subsidized apartment because he’s a veteran.
Hough wasn’t in the Army long. He was discharged after an arrest for theft. It wasn’t his first time being on the wrong side of the law. He remembers shoplifting when he was 10 years old while growing up in Plano, Illinois.
“Every time I faced a Y in the road, I chose the bad route,” Hough told me.
He has a long rap sheet, though at 69, he’s less ashamed than some folks might be. He pulled two sheets of paper out of a folder he brought with him for our meeting, showing me all his arrests over the years — theft, fraud, robbery and even arson. A few years here and there in jail or prison, adding up to 32 years, nearly half his life.
Hough was disappointed when I told him that the Starbucks where he used to hang out, on Wydown Boulevard and Hanley Road, had shut down. The last time he was there was shortly before he got arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a three-state spree of bank robberies. That spree,…
