Businesswoman transforms life with religion in Un-Chained Gang

Dressed in a black leather vest covered in patches, Alicia Hamilton waited in a small room at the Monroe County Jail.  

A security camera watched overhead as she sat casually with a black boom box beneath her chair.

For Alicia, 49, waiting outside the jail had become routine. Faint lines beneath her eyes highlighted her lack of rest.

Inside the crowded waiting room, she did not linger alone.

Sitting next to Alicia was another member of the Un-Chained Gang. Three more waited across the room.

A stocky man, also wearing a leather vest, stood in the middle of the room, gripping in his left hand a copy of the Holy Bible.

Alicia and the other Un-Chained Gang ministers were there to preach to prisoners face-to-face, to spread the word of Jesus Christ.

“Let’s call them and let them know we’re ready to roll,” the man with the Bible said, walking toward the telephone.

“It’s time for church, grab my Bible,” another Un-Chained member said.

Carrying the boom box by her side, Alicia followed the pack through the gray metal door with a small window, into the jail.

Once inside, the men and women in the Un-Chained Gang separated into two groups. Alicia and the other two women in the group walked into the common area of the women’s noisy cellblock.

To kill time, the inmates watched television and played cards, but were disrupted when Alicia yelled “Church!”

It is optional to attend the Un-Chained church service, but about 20 women gathered around the tables to pray and listen to worship music.

Following service, prisoners frequently approach Alicia to speak one-on-one, asking for guidance on how to improve their lives.

It was not too late for the prisoners, she lectured, to secure a spot in heaven.

In fact, the congregation at her church, the House of Prayer Ellettsville, is comprised of ex-convicts — from convicted drug addicts to violent criminals.

Even their leader, Pastor Larry Mitchell, is a former member of Hell’s Henchmen, a Chicago-based motorcycle gang known for violence.

But for Alicia, preaching to inmates is a little peculiar. Standing before women trapped in cells, she has never worn an orange jumpsuit herself.

“I never got put in jail,” she said. “But there’s some things and situations I had myself in where I could have been put in jail, I just didn’t get caught.”

***

Leaving behind a broken past, Alicia filled her voids with religion. But on her mission to become good, she wonders if she pushed herself too hard.

As a child, Alicia dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.

“I’m never getting married, I’m never having kids and I’m never working in a factory,” Alicia recalls telling her mother.

But each of these would soon become her reality.

With drugs and alcohol flowing through her veins, Alicia became pregnant and married her first husband when she was 16 years old. In the four years to follow, the young couple had two more children. But they struggled.

With the responsibility of raising a family, Alicia cut back on her partying. But her husband, she said, was using cocaine.

“He did like to party, and he had a couple girlfriends, which didn’t help matters,” Alicia said.

Arguments ensued. Divorce seemed inevitable.

“Well I ought to just kill the kids and kill myself, and you can just do whatever you want to do,” her husband said when they fought.

When she came home from work one day, her children were watching television in the living room. In their bedroom, her husband shot himself.

Following his suicide, Alicia began drinking again, alone. With Alicia’s mother taking care of the children on weekends, she binged.

She found a dead-end job at Bloomington’s General Electric factory, building refrigerators along a conveyor belt. Her job, she said, was like being “camped out on the edge of hell.”

She dated several men from work, eventually marrying one under two conditions: They were not to drink alcohol together, and they were to attend church.

This decision came after a New Years party when her then-boyfriend shoved her into his car after an argument, fracturing her back.

Despite the lawsuit Alicia filed against him, they still married in 1992.
Immediately after their marriage, he stopped attending church. Then she stopped.

Then they divorced.

She tried antidepressants, which intensified her despair. Alcohol was her next stop.

The slump continued until she was kicked back into reality. Her 19-year-old and 17-year-old sons each had pregnant girlfriends.

Before her grandchildren were born, she thought, she needed to clean up her act. She turned to a past relationship, one that had never fully developed. She turned to Jesus Christ.

***

Alicia prayed in the second row at the House of Prayer Ellettsville. Draped over her shoulders was the arm of her third husband of nearly 11 years, Jeff Hamilton.

The couple married shortly after Alicia started attending the House of Prayer Ellettsville. Through faith, Jeff was digging himself out of alcoholism.

A scar running diagonally across the top of the shy man’s forehead tells the story of his past life.

After being charged for drinking and driving nine times, losing several jobs, crashing in two near-fatal accidents and relapsing several times, he has been clean now for 12 years.

Inside the busy church, Alicia was not the only church member wearing a leather vest, covered entirely with Christian-oriented patches:

“Property of Jesus Christ.”

“100% for Jesus.”

“Satan sucks.”

On the back was the Un-Chained Gang Ministries logo — two wrists breaking free from shackles, superimposed over a cross.

Alicia and Jeff started clapping their hands and singing in unison with the up-beat music in the chapel.

Pastor Mitchell stood center stage with an acoustic guitar. His long-sleeved shirt concealed the tattoos dotting his arms.

Jeff and Alicia each had their own copies of the Bible resting on their laps. As Mitchell gave his sermon, Alicia took notes on a yellow notepad.

Alicia chose to attend the House of Prayer Ellettsville several years ago because the clergy is composed of like-minded people.

When Alicia first turned to religion, she thought she was through with men, no more struggled relationships. At first, even her connection with God was rough.

For God, she thought, she was not good enough.

“I always had this feeling that if I messed up, God was up there with a big hammer, ready to strike you with lightning or hit you on the head,” Alicia said.

But now — married and fully entangled in her religion — she could not imagine continuing under her old lifestyle. If she had, she said she would have been miserable, hateful, bitter and angry. She would have hated men forever. Worse yet, she never would have had the courage to quit her job at GE.

She would never have been able to purchase her own Christian-oriented business.

***

Before dawn broke, Alicia woke up. After letting her three dogs outside, she returned to bed to study the Bible and pray for an hour. Then, she was off to work.

Inside her small business in a strip mall, Alicia sat alone in the darkness with the doors still locked. Eating a bowl of oatmeal on her cluttered desk, Alicia enjoyed a little downtime.

Along the wall behind her hung spools of thread, one for every color imaginable. Her pink t-shirt advertised her sewing and embroidery business, “God is Sew Good.”

It is not quite fashion design, she admitted, but it is close enough.

A small crucifix dangled from her neck. Draped over the back of her office chair was a black hoodie adorning the Un-Chained Gang logo.

After unlocking the front door and flipping the switch on a neon “open” sign, Alicia began to embroider “dropping the puck on cancer” on the back of hockey jerseys.

While her business does cater to the needs of the Un-Chained Gang, most of her business is secular.

The jerseys, 90 of them in total, caused problems the whole way through, she said.

Her customer did not deliver the jerseys or patches on time, but still expected his order to be completed soon.

“There is only so much I can physically do, and I already told him I’m not working 24/7 to get them done,” Alicia said.

Her stress levels rose when she sewed a patch onto a jersey improperly.

The sounds of a Christian radio station filled the store’s airwaves.

As Alicia continued to work on the jerseys, Jeff walked through the front door toward a vacant desk — his desk.

Alicia said she was skeptical about hiring her husband at first. Just before Alicia founded her business, she and Jeff were also talking about getting divorced.

“If I was the same way I used to be before Christ and he was the same way he used to be before Christ, we probably would have killed each other.”

But they made it through.

Expanding farther into the strip mall, Jeff has his own room — the “man cave” — where he screen-prints t-shirts and sings along with the radio.

“Working in an atmosphere where I can think about God, talk about God, listen to Christian music all day, if I can just surround myself with God, I’m so much better off,” Jeff said. “I don’t think I’ll ever work for anybody else.”

After work, Alicia is ready to return home, to hit the couch. But often she returns to church. She assists with the youth group, teaches a class on divine healing and manages the church’s bookstore, filled with clothing she and Jeff made.

Inside the church’s youth room, teenagers practiced instruments on stage. Sitting in the audience, Alicia chewed her fingernails.

The youth group used to have more than 100 participants. Whittled down to only a handful, Alicia decided to help. Although the attendance is back to about 15 teens, she does not know how much longer she can last.

Burned out, something in her life must go. Contemplating her end with the youth group or other obligations in her life, she has not yet made up her mind.

She does not know how long she will own her business or ride with the Un-Chained gang.

But down the road, Alicia hopes to do her own mission work, just she and Jeff.

“Tomorrow has to be a better day,” Alicia said. “I believe it’s going to be.”