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A former gangster morphs into a lawyer who helps troubled kids
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Christian Science Monitor
Posted: March 27th, 2016
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2016/0317...
When David Lee Windecher comes to court, he cuts a striking figure. Once known as Red, a notorious North Miami gangster, Windecher has come a long way. The drug dealer and larcenist who had been arrested 13 times by his 20th birthday ... has morphed into one of Atlantas hottest young lawyers. Only four years into his law career, [he] uses his own gripping memoir The American Dream: HisStory in the Making to give troubled kids a road map to putting their adolescent mistakes in the rearview mirror. His message: Too many Americans prosecutors, citizens, and even gangsters themselves buy into a myth that youths are a lost cause. Those sentiments were cemented into law in the 1980s and 90s. Second chances come hard, he says. The problem is that everyone, even the gangsters, looks at the worst, not the potential in other people. But the fact is, you are not a victim of circumstance. You have a choice. It took watching his brother and two sisters turning to gang life, finding faith in a higher power, and meeting an aspiring FBI agent ... for Windecher to see that there was a way out. He was also shaken by a poem titled The Monument, about how God gives each person a unique set of problems to resolve. It says, no one else may have the blessings that these problems will bring you. In 2011, Windecher secured an internship with the DeKalb County District Attorneys Office, [where] in the juvenile division ... he began to strengthen the countys diversion programs aimed at keeping first-time offenders out of long-term detention.
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