Grace Coleman thinks about her crime constantly. Killing two people while driving drunk forced her to confront who she really was, and since the day after that devastating night in late 2020, she has been trying to reshape her life through recovery, self-reflection and the slow, uncertain work of rehabilitation behind bars.
“It’s not even just as simple as, oh, I wake up in prison every day and that in itself is a reminder of the harm that I’ve caused,” Coleman said. “It’s the way that I choose to live my life. It’s being in AA. It’s being a part of these DUI programs. Sharing my story in those spaces, that’s what keeps me sober.”
Her story is a hard one to tell.
On Dec. 8, 2020, Coleman ran a red light and slammed into a car carrying a family of five. Gabriela Andrade and Henry Saldana-Mejia were killed. Their three young daughters, strapped in the backseat, were injured but survived.
DUI-related homicides often leave victims’ families and entire communities searching for answers. Without any intent to harm, the person responsible is frequently left trying to reconcile the person they were with the damage they caused.
More than 1,300 alcohol-related driving deaths occur each year in California, though it’s difficult to know exactly how many of those cases lead to criminal charges or convictions, since state murder statutes don’t separately track DUI-related homicides.
Coleman is now serving her sentence at a time when California’s approach to prison rehabilitation continues to shift. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed reforms designed to better prepare incarcerated people for parole and successful reentry into society. After decades of tough-on-crime policy, the state has increasingly embraced trauma-informed programming and second-chance opportunities for those willing to examine why they did what they did.
That kind of self-examination is not something every offender is ready to take on — some need years, some decades, some never get there. But Coleman said she began working on herself almost immediately.
“In the beginning, I was like, all right — I clearly got to get therapy,” she said. “I need to get my mental health in check. Clearly something is wrong with me if I just woke up and found out I killed people. This doesn’t just happen.”
While awaiting trial in Orange County Jail, Coleman met face-to-face with relatives of Andrade and Saldana-Mejia — a rare occurrence, especially before a conviction. Her defense attorney, the judge, the prosecutor and the family’s lawyer all helped arrange the meeting. Coleman listened to the family’s grief and tried, through her own tears, to answer their questions.
“As a daughter, and as an only daughter, I knew that feeling that my parents were my everything,” she said. “And I just couldn’t even, like, stand the fact that I had taken away the two most important people in a child’s life.”
Soon after that 2022 meeting, Coleman pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.
“For me, it definitely started with that day,” she said. “Any bit of denial that I was stuck in was gone. Any bit of selfishness that I still had — and caring about myself and what was going to happen to me — didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. But it definitely at the same time brought a sense of hope versus just all of this devastating hopelessness.”
Jeff Roberts, who represented the victims’ family, recalled meeting Coleman during that private sit-down and later during depositions for a civil wrongful death lawsuit. “I did get to know Grace a little bit, and I know she’s got a story too,” Roberts said. “She had a bit of a broken situation, even though she seemed like a young lady of privilege.”
Roberts said he hopes Coleman will eventually leave prison and continue warning others about the dangers of drunken driving and substance abuse. He admitted he was surprised her sentence doesn’t come with a guaranteed release date.
“Grace needed to serve a good length of time,” Roberts said. “But I don’t think she needed to serve a life sentence, because quite frankly — that she killed two people and left three people orphaned is a life sentence. Emotionally, she won’t forget about that.”
Coleman’s ordeal began in a hospital bed, where she woke up groggy, sedated and confused. Her left arm was in a sling; her right wrist was cuffed to the bed rail. A nurse gave her the barest details while a police officer stood by in silence.
“I didn’t know what happened, who I killed, how I even got into my car that night,” Coleman said. “Because the last thing I remembered, I was nowhere near my car — so I had a lot of questions.”
She was later moved to a jail medical unit under COVID lockdown conditions, with visits suspended and communication limited. It took weeks for her to fully understand what had happened.
Her boyfriend had dropped her off at home shortly before the crash. What should have ended with her stumbling toward her front door instead ended with her getting behind the wheel of her Range Rover in a blackout, fueled by alcohol, drugs and the tension of a troubled relationship.
In jail, she began meeting with a private mental health specialist who was allowed to see her despite pandemic restrictions. Coleman said she had always believed in therapy but had never fully committed to it before.
“I talk about it like an identity crisis, because you’re stripping away layers of yourself and going through such a huge transition in your life,” she said.
Weekly sessions and newfound sobriety helped her examine what had led to her substance abuse — a deep lack of self-worth, codependent patterns and years of trying to be the person who always said yes.
“The crime would have never happened without deep levels of alcoholism, and then, bringing it back to the reasons why I drank or how I even ended up in these alcoholic states,” she said.
As a 22-year-old white woman from Laguna Beach, Coleman worried how others in jail might view her privilege. Her case had been covered on local television, and many recognized her. To get by, she said, she needed both humility and self-assurance.
She leaned on her faith to manage anxiety she once numbed with alcohol, marijuana and Xanax. With little formal programming available in jail, she created her own routines — organizing nondenominational worship and recovery groups, collecting positive affirmations, cooking with others and carving out space to practice yoga and meditation.
When old friends visited, they were struck by how healthy she looked compared to the years when she had been drinking heavily.
“That party girl version of me was something that I had to let go of,” she said. “I struggled with that for sure because I felt it was like a part of who I was — being fun and being social. But I realized I could be all of those things without needing to be like, you know, that horrible blacked out friend.”
Her guilty plea reflected her desire to move forward, even though she had little understanding of how the state prison system worked. During her 18 months in county jail, she learned that CDCR could offer more structured rehabilitative programs and education opportunities than she’d had access to before.
When Coleman arrived at her first state prison in fall 2022, other DUI offenders welcomed her into peer support circles, where she heard stories that mirrored her own and realized she wasn’t alone in carrying guilt, shame and grief.
She became active in Alcoholics Anonymous and later discovered Felons Against Distracted and Drunk Driving, known as FADD.
The transition to prison made consistent mental health treatment more difficult. Phone sessions with her old therapist weren’t the same as in-person visits, and the prison health system assigned her a rotating cast of psychiatrists and psychologists, each with different approaches.
Within prison culture, seeking mental health treatment could also carry a stigma — some feared it might be seen as weakness or hurt their chances before the parole board.
“I come from the generation who very much believe in mental health and therapy as a positive thing and, like, a healthy thing,” Coleman said. “So coming into the prison system and there being this whole stigma, but also fear of it, was very different to me.”
As she adjusted to long-term incarceration, Coleman gravitated toward rehabilitation-focused programs rather than the more disruptive behaviors some young offenders fall into. That often meant spending time with women decades older than her who had been incarcerated for far longer.
“Everybody’s older than me,” she said. “I’m always the youngest by like 20 years.”
Watching some of those women grow old in prison, without guaranteed release even after parole hearings, made her question her own future.
“I look at older women in here and especially like older women who do the same things I do,” she said. “Because one day, they could be me or I could be them. Having a life sentence, I know that my way home isn’t promised.”
For a long time, Coleman resisted psychiatric medication, worried it might undermine her hard-earned sobriety. She leaned instead on exercise, yoga, peer support and her faith.
In October 2023, she was transferred to the lower-security California Institution for Women in Chino, which offered more programming and a calmer environment. She began teaching yoga, took a leadership role in AA meetings, and joined Responsibly Driven, a curriculum designed to help DUI offenders understand and change the decision-making patterns that led to their crimes.
She also took on a vocational training assignment in audio-video production, joined the prison newsletter team and was appointed to the Inmate Advisory Council. Still, she continued to wrestle with anxiety.
Sabrina Limon, who has been incarcerated since 2016, befriended Coleman early on, bonding over their shared commitment to sobriety and the 12 steps.
“You could see her anxiety just all over her face and body language,” Limon said. “It just looked like she was searching to find like, ‘What am I supposed to be doing? Where do I go?’ And you could really really see that anxiety on her.”
Limon, 46, said she had long avoided mental health treatment herself, wary of rumors that it could hurt her standing with the parole board.
California Institution for Women eventually opened an onsite guidance center, making counseling more accessible without requiring inmates to be formally classified as psychiatric patients. The open approach made it easier for Coleman to seek help, and she eventually agreed to try antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication under psychiatric supervision — something she once thought conflicted with her sobriety.
“Anxiety is a part of like my daily life,” Coleman said. “It’s something that I ignored for a very long time and why I turned to alcoholism and smoking weed in the first place, so I think acknowledging my anxiety today is really important.”
Watching Coleman work through therapy inspired Limon to seek treatment of her own.
“I’ve seen such a change in Grace as far as her anxiety goes and really working on her mental health one-on-one with a therapist,” Limon said. “I decided I’m gonna go check it out for myself. And sure enough, thanks to Grace, now I have a therapist. It’s wonderful. It’s helping me so much.”
Because she was 22 when she committed her crime, Coleman qualifies as a youth offender under California law, making her eligible for a parole hearing in 2033. What happens between now and then, she said, will shape how the board views her.
“Rehabilitation isn’t presented to us on a silver platter or silver bunk beds,” Coleman said. “It’s something that we actively work for.”
She runs laps on the prison’s rec yard even when Chino’s summer heat climbs past 90 degrees, though she says her yoga mat remains her most reliable refuge. Drugs still circulate through most prison populations, and staying clear of that world requires constant vigilance.
Coleman lives in a housing unit built around a code of personal accountability, home to the prison’s Puppy Program, where residents train rescue dogs to become service animals. Participants must remain free of disciplinary violations and agree to regular drug testing.
“You see a lot of people who want to start doing better and who want to be in like a better living environment to stay sober,” she said. “They come over here so that they feel like they have a positive support system to get out of the mix.”
Coleman keeps herself occupied through outside partnerships as well. She shares her story through UCLA’s Sentencing Project, writes poetry through the nonprofit Poetic Justice, and participates in restorative justice discussions organized by ReEvolution, a group that brings formerly incarcerated mentors into the prison to talk about the cycles of harm — both experienced and caused.
Barbara Van Sickle, ReEvolution’s executive director, has worked with Coleman in group settings for some time.
“I’ve seen her get to a place where she’s living in responsibility, accountability, and remorse, and not feeling that she can move forward,” Van Sickle said. “But I believe she’s working through that with a lot of introspection and is beginning to find her value again.”
Original source: CalMatters
