After my first meeting with Doug Hollis in 1994, I walked away shaking my head.

Here was this man, once a ghetto kid from Philadelphia, who had killed someone in a purse-snatching in 1975. At 17, he had been sentenced to life in prison.

When I met him almost 20 years later, he had virtually no hope of leaving prison alive, and yet, there he was learning, studying, improving, enrolling in every course the prison offered, extending a helping hand to younger inmates.

He was a role model, the inmate that prison staff held up as a positive example.

Sure, I admired him. But, truth be told, a small part of me wondered why he tilted at windmills.

I saw Doug again the other day, sitting in his office on North Front Street with his co-workers and Vladimir R. Beaufils, his boss.

When I confessed how I’d felt so long ago, Beaufils nicely summed up the long years Doug had spent in prison: “He worked as if he were getting out when there was no hope of getting out.”

Because life means life in Pennsylvania, commutation has been the only glimmer of hope. It is, at best, a drawn-out, frustrating process with very little chance of succeeding. In fact, one can count on one hand the number of commutations signed by any recent governor.

The prison door opened for Doug two years ago not by commutation, but through a U.S. Supreme Court decision that did away with mandatory life sentences for juveniles. A second ruling made the decision retroactive, and juvenile lifers were resentenced. For Doug, that brought a sentence of 30 years. Since he had served 42 years, he was released from SCI Mahanoy, although he will remain on parole for the rest of his life.

After his release, he went to work in a factory and set about adjusting to life with the help of a mentor at Sound Community Solutions, the nonprofit Beaufils runs. SCS, with contracts to work with recently released prisoners in numerous counties, has a thick menu of offerings from employment training to anger management.

People coming out of prison often have numerous issues. They have old friends they must avoid, and others, often family, with whom they wish to reconnect. Often they don’t have a strong sense of who they are or know whom they can trust. Many need help with housing or finding jobs. Often they come from dysfunctional backgrounds and have to battle drug and alcohol issues.

Mentors aim to provide the help they need, offer a shoulder they can lean on and navigate a world that has changed while they were in prison.

Its brochure promises, “We will meet you where you are. Our goal is to leave you at a better place than where you were when we met.”

After years of improving himself in prison, Doug was in a pretty good place when he met SCS. He had his wife, Dianna, their home in Millersburg and all that education he had piled on in prison.

Once he completed its program, SCS offered Doug a job as a mentor. He is now, he said, “officially blessed.”

In many ways, his work with SCS is not unlike what Doug had done in prison. There, he was what inmates call an “old head,” a fellow whose years behind bars enabled him to offer advice to younger inmates.

Long ago, Doug told me: If prison is to be your home, it makes sense to create the best atmosphere possible while making yourself the best that you can be.

He believed then and believes now that “there’s positive in each and every one of us. You have to invest in you in a positive way.”

This is the message he shares with those he mentors.

Doug remains deeply religious and credits his faith and Dianna, who married him 30-plus years ago in prison, for much of his success and the determination to keep tilting at those windmills.

“There are so many people who invested in me,” he said. “I view where I am as a blessing from God.”

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net