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With each step forward her twin babies make, Albert Lea mother Victoria Lopez is torn in two.

On one hand is the happiness she has as she watches her daughters grow and reach milestones after being born premature almost a year ago. On the other hand is the knowledge that as each month passes, she is one month closer to having to say goodbye.

Lopez over the last year has participated in a program called Healthy Start, which allows the Commissioner of Corrections in Minnesota the authority to conditionally release incarcerated mothers who are pregnant or within eight months post-delivery from prison to the community. The goal is for these mothers to engage in work, vocational training, substance abuse or mental health treatment, education or parenting education and help get their child’s life off to a healthy start. The program may last the duration of the pregnancy and up to 1 year of the newborn child’s life.

In Lopez’s case, that one-year mark is approaching, as her twins, Lylah and Willow, were born Nov. 3, 2022.

She said she found out at her review six months into her year in the program that she would not be able to extend past the one year as someone with more than a 12-month prison sentence. The commissioner of corrections in a letter last month notified her that her date to report to prison is Nov. 6.

“I am grateful. I am blessed,” Lopez said at her home in Albert Lea this week. “This really was a blessing; it’s just now the hard part comes.”

Lopez was sentenced Nov. 2, 2022, in Freeborn County District Court to seven years and four months in prison for selling methamphetamine to an informant two years before.

She said because of how well she had done in turning her life around since her arrest, she, her family and friends and her lawyer all had thought the judge would depart from the state sentencing guidelines and that she would serve her sentence on probation instead of in prison. Instead, she was immediately taken into custody and was headed to prison.

She had previously been convicted of two second-degree sales charges in 2011, and she said the judge told her he hoped some time in prison would do her some good.

The night after the sentencing, the stress of that day sent her into pre-term labor, and she was rushed to the emergency room at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and then taken to the hospital in Austin, where she ultimately delivered the babies. From there, the babies were taken to the newborn intensive care unit in Mankato.

At first, she said she didn’t think she would be able to see her babies again before reporting to prison until she received a phone call from the head programmer at the Shakopee prison telling her about the program and letting her know she thought she would be the perfect candidate.

She was thrilled.

Lopez said the first month of her daughters’ lives, she and her spouse, Daniel, spent in the NICU in Mankato — being born six weeks early, the babies needed to continue to grow and get stronger. Lilah and Willow were released from the hospital Nov. 29 but ended up back in the hospital two weeks later with RSV.

Once back home, Lopez said she took care of the babies’ needs, along with her now 2-year-old son, Arturo, while seeing a parole officer one time a week and being monitored through an electronic ankle bracelet.

She continued with her schooling through Riverland Community College and is currently in her last semester for psychology. She hopes to someday counsel youth addicts and has been certified as a recovery peer specialist and hired through a recovery platform called Kyros in Minnesota. She said she has been told she will have a job there when she returns.

She said it has been a challenging year as she feels like her life is in limbo. Her charges originally came in 2020.

“It’s been this gray area for me — and mentally it just takes a toll. You can be smiling, happy, giggling and then you just get caught in this moment where you’re just sad,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without them.

“Normally you do good and you get praised for it or you at least earn the rewards. For me, the last three years, I’ve been doing good, I’ve been pushing forward, I’ve been staying faithful, just climbing above everything with my family, my spouse, the community. … All to go and have all of that stricken from me … it just doesn’t make sense.”

With the babies still being so little, she is afraid they will wake up one morning and she will not be there and they won’t be able to understand what has happened. She is also worried for her 2-year-old son.

“It was such a blessing and at the same time, it’s just hard,” Lopez said. “It’s hard for me because is it better to have left them when they were little or is it better to have been here for these times and let them grow but then get attached to me and be gone?”

Lopez said she has found friendship and faith through members of Hope Church, where she has attended with the children.

She has learned to have faith, even in the darkest times.

“Sometimes that’s where you’re supposed to be at that moment because maybe you have a mission there or a journey there,” she said. “I’ve had to accept the fact that unfortunately for me that maybe it’s somewhere I need to be at the time.”

She is proud that as of Sunday she will have three years of sobriety, and she hopes to be able to go into prison with the knowledge from the last three years and continue to grow with the other women there.

Her parents and daughter will be moving in her home to help with the babies, and her spouse is taking off to be able to take care of the babies full-time.

A birthday bash benefit

A birthday bash benefit is slated for the family from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday at Hope Church to not only celebrate the twins’ birthday but also to aid her spouse and family with the things they might need for the children while she is gone.

“It’s really just making sure that on top of already grieving, that they won’t have to worry about those little things that people kind of forget about,” she said.

In a sense, it will also be a farewell for her and an opportunity for her to be reminded of how strong her village is so that she can go to prison with the peace of mind that her children will be OK.

“As a mom, you don’t think you ever have to leave your children,” she said.

After the benefit and until Nov. 6 approaches, she said she wants to experience as much as she can with her children and family.

She has set up doctors appointments and filled them in on what is happening and wants to install a big white board in the kitchen for a to-do list.

Lopez’s story has also caught the attention of others who are following her story, including The Marshall Project, and a documentary film crew, who hope to turn her story into a film that could be shown on HBO or other streaming platforms.

The crew will be in town the last week before Lopez leaves.

“If it can just open a little bit more awareness and a little bit more eyes to the fact that we do recover as addicts,” she said. “And we have children and we have parents and grandparents and cousins and aunts and neighbors — whose lives that we impact.”

She said from being in the midst of addiction previously, she hopes to lobby for increased resources for addicts in the area.

“I just wish they understood that I am not just what the charge says,” she said. “I am more than that.”

 

Related stories:

‘It turned out to be quite a blessing’: Woman, sentenced to prison earlier this month, gets opportunity to be with newborn twins through program

Albert Lea woman sentenced to prison for meth sales