FALLBROOK: Reborn: Man turns criminal past into new mission

By DAN SIMMONS - Staff Writer | Saturday, July 5, 2008 5:05 PM PDT ∞

FALLBROOK ---- "Hello, my name is Matthew David Noreen. I am a 29-year-old male who has found himself in a California State Prison for a past sinful life that I am not proud of at all."

Thus began his letter.

Noreen, now 32 years old, sent it to 28 churches from Encinitas to Rainbow on Aug. 16, 2005. In 119 days, he wrote, he would be released from Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe after completing a four-year sentence. He was coming out of prison fully devoted to God, he wrote, an utterly changed man.

The letter highlighted themes Noreen had repeated throughout his time behind bars and beyond: Total honesty about his past life as a drug-addicted, check-forging convict in Vista and total conviction that he would never return to that life.

"Prison," he said on a recent Wednesday, "was a very positive thing for me. But it was also a very long thing."

He made the comment sitting in his cramped office at Fallbrook Irrigation, a supplier of sprinkler and well equipment where he's risen in three years from just-out-of-prison entry-level stockboy to assistant manager. His computer's screensaver displayed a photo of him and his wife, Mary, surrounded by 17 kids ages 9 to 14 dressed in bright colors and flashing wide smiles.

"They're my kids," he said with a smile of his own. For the last year, he and Mary have visited the kids every Wednesday night in their apartment in a rough part of town. They're mentors in an anti-crime mentoring program called GANAS (Guide and Nurture and Support).

"I'd love to help others not go down the path I went," he said, turning serious. "I just want the best for them."

Taking a chance

But how did he get from a 6-by-9 "kennel," as he called his cell at Chuckawalla, to his model-citizen life in Fallbrook just three years later?

It all comes back to the letter from prison. In it, he wrote that he needed the pastors' prayers, their trust and their help finding a lease on a two-bedroom apartment for him, his wife and his stepdaughter. They had been applying for places, he said, with no luck.

"It seems when we tell them that I am in prison, they tell us SORRY," he wrote.

Just two churches ---- Living Waters Christian Fellowship and Calvary Chapel in Fallbrook ---- responded to his letter, Noreen said. So they moved to Fallbrook when he was released in December 2005.

Jerry and Betty Star, who are parishioners at Calvary Chapel, happened to have some rental properties. They had never rented to a convicted felon. But they decided, after much deliberation and prayer, that they'd take a chance on Noreen.

"He paid his price and as an individual, he has a gift," Jerry Star said. "He has a heart that just shows and when you see that, you say, 'Let's give this guy a try.' "

The Noreens rented from the Stars for two years and remained in good standing, Jerry Star said. But the relationship doesn't stop there.

Jerry Star has owned Fallbrook Irrigation Inc. for 25 years. After he got to know Noreen as a renter, he hired him as a stocker at the business in July 2006.

"I never knew a thing about a valve when I got here," Noreen said.

Two years later, he's an encyclopedia, talking in the obscure language of water tanks and well pumps as he talks with customers to fill orders. But he's better known for his customer-service skills.

"Every customer I've talked to says they can feel his sincerity, feel the love coming from him," Star said.

An ever-present past

But his past is never completely behind him, Noreen said.

On May 20, managers arrived to find one of the company's trucks missing, along with $342 from the till. Star had planned to leave for vacation that day, but canceled to deal with the thefts. Noreen had closed the place the night the money and truck disappeared.

"Everything was pointing at him," Star said. "He looked awful guilty."

"I was in tears that day," Noreen said. "I knew I didn't do it, but with my past and the evidence, I knew people would suspect me."

It was no easier for Star.

"For about four to five days it was rough," he said. Noreen had heart-to-heart talks with him denying any involvement. He even quoted Scripture. Star prayed, asking for guidance, and decided to hold off on firing Noreen, he said.

A week after the incident, another employee, who admitted to having an alcohol problem, confessed to the thefts, Star said. Noreen was exonerated, but the incident reminded of the thin ice he still stands on because of his past.

"I've worked my rear end off to get to where I am today," he said, "but I saw that it could all disappear."

Star said he was relieved it wasn't Noreen and irate at the other now ex-employee for putting him in that position.

"There's two different people," he said. "One with a heart, one without."

More recently, Noreen was denied a coveted summer internship with the San Diego County Water Authority, which he saw as a steppingstone to a career in the industry. He said he faced intense questioning about his ex-convict status and wonders if it may have set him back.

"He was crushed," said his wife, Mary. "I told him, 'You know, Matt, there's going to be many doors closed in your face and you have to be strong in the face of that.'"

She knows plenty about adversity herself.

"I drug her through the mud," her husband said.

'In Satan's shoes'

They met in 2000. Noreen was in the midst of what he called a decade-long downward spiral. He went from high-school graduate and water polo player from a solid middle-class family to strung-out junkie willing to do anything, and steal from anyone, to get high. First, he did marijuana. Then he discovered methamphetamine.

"I truly knew what kind of man he could be," Mary said, "but the drugs literally ran his life. He was in Satan's shoes."

By the time he was arrested and charged with 21 felony counts ---- including check fraud, commercial burglary and drug sales ----- her patience had vanished. She had thrown him and his clothes to the curb. When he got arrested, she refused to answer his phone calls from jail.

"He called me four times and I hung up on him every time," she said.

He had his come-to-Jesus moment after learning early in the court process that he faced 15 years in prison.

"I went back to my cell in Vista and cried," he said. "I said 'Lord, I'm yours. Get me out of this and I'll serve you every day in prison and out.'"

The good Lord ---- plus a good lawyer, he added with a smile ---- got his sentence reduced to four years, with credit for time he served in the county jail.

In prison, he said, he found an escape from his old life. He sobered up with the help of a 12-step program. He became an avid Bible scholar and made the chapel his second home. And he passed the time writing letters.

"When they were on lockdown, he'd write me three to four letters a day," Mary Noreen said. She came back around to him, seeing the new direction he'd pointed his life.

"I truly don't think he could have done it without being in prison," she said. "He made the choice to turn his life around."

As his release grew closer, the couple made the decision to get married to honor their Christian faith by not living together before marriage. Because of Noreen's close relationship with the chaplain, they were allowed to get married in the chapel inside the prison, he said.

She wore black pants and a white blouse. He wore his prison-issue denim-blue shirt and jeans. His parents witnessed it. Their first kiss had to be brief per prison rules against contact.

When they left the chapel and walked back through the yard, the other inmates cheered and showered them with rice, which is rationed.

"I remember thinking, 'Gosh, I hope that's not their food for the week,' " Mary Noreen said with a laugh.

Another inmate drew a sketch of them together in their wedding clothes under the banner "United This Day." Noreen had to pay him $20 worth of soup rations for the sketch, which still hangs on the wall of their house.

Mary Noreen and Matthew's parents left after the 10-minute ceremony and Matthew returned to prison, not able to see his new wife again until her next allowed visit three weeks later.

"It was the most bizarre place anybody could get married," she said.

The couple intend to adopt a child and buy a house someday. And they plan to keep mentoring kids. But they've also started Send One Up Ministries for ex-convicts. Eventually, Noreen said, they would like to run a transition house to help ex-convicts go from prison back to society.

"It's sad because there are (ex-convicts) out there truly trying to change their lives," Mary Noreen said, "but if our society doesn't give them a chance, it makes it hard."

Contact staff writer Dan Simmons at (760) 740-5426 or dsimmons@nctimes.com.

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