By November 2004, Andres Idarraga was studying in the library of the University of Rhode Island’s Providence campus. He eventually won admission to Brown University.

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The Providence Journal Mary Murphy

In 1998 Andres Idarraga entered prison as a 20-year-old convicted cocaine dealer facing the next 14 years behind bars.

He’s returning to the Adult Correctional Institutions today as a parolee with degrees in economics and literature from Brown University and with an acceptance letter from the nation’s top-ranked law school, Yale University.

If you were to plot the implausible arc of Idarraga’s journey — from his drug dealing days as a teenager with a gun in the 1990s, to the day the state corrections director personally drove him to New Haven for an interview with the law school’s dean, to his speech today at a prison graduation ceremony — one moment would be marked in bold, an instant that altered the trajectory of his life.

It came one evening, four years into his sentence, as he sat watching the news in his cell. The television showed footage of a Mexican man struggling to swim across a swollen Rio Grande. The man grew weak and the muddy river took him.

Idarraga thought of his father, a Colombian who had crossed the same river to enter the country. His father had become a citizen and worked mill jobs for seven years to bring Idarraga and the rest of his family to Rhode Island.

“And here was his reward,” Idarraga recalled last week in an interview. “I was in prison.”

Now 30 years old, Idarraga looks back at his 6 years and 4 months behind bars — an experience that can destroy any man’s will — as his opportunity for redemption.

“To be completely honest, prison gave me the time to sink deep into thought, to become introspective of my life. What I learned was that if you mess up big enough, the mechanical processes that are there to deal with you will not think twice about locking you up for the rest of your life. And many times rightly so.”

Shame became his motivator, curiosity his salvation — a craving for knowledge that would help him imagine a life beyond the walls. But first there was fear.

Behind the ominous gray stone and steel bars of Maximum Security — home for some of the state’s most menacing criminals — Idarraga carved the figure of a “rather small guy.” He began lifting weights to protect himself “in case.”

By coincidence the prison library is close to the gym. As Idarraga made his regular trips to the barbells, “I would hear these pretty interesting conversations among people going to and from the library.”

Idarraga had graduated with good grades from Shea High School, Pawtucket, in 1995. His teachers and guidance counselor urged him to apply to college. But college required an investment of several years, and as he explained to Corrections Director A.T. Wall, “Books weren’t putting money in my pockets but I knew that drugs could.”

But now in prison, Idarraga asked some of the inmates if he could join in their conversations. Their talks ranged from presidential politics of 2000, to businesses in the news, to the autobiographical works of Thurgood Marshall and Nelson Mandela.

“I wasn’t thinking then about long term, that ‘Hey this could lead to something.’ It was just very interesting to me.”

Eventually Idarraga began helping other inmates study for their high school equivalency diplomas. He wouldn’t give them the answers to questions but would show them how to find them. And he read. Everything he could get his hands on.

The teaching and reading “gave me a sense of self and a sense of worth so that when I watched the news through the filter of education, I understood why it should bother me that I was in prison.”

He decided it was not too late to save himself.

With the help of a USA Today story that detailed the steps involved in the college admissions process, he began applying to colleges — from a prison cell.

Each essay he sent out, to the Community College of Rhode Island, Johnson & Wales University, New England Institute of Technology, the University of Rhode Island, Brown University, told of his journey, his incarceration and how important he now saw education for his future.

“I knew I was going to work hard at it. It didn’t bother me if it was going to be Brown or CCRI. If I needed to become an electrician, fine.”

His essays were convincing. Every school but Brown accepted him.

The Parole Board dealt his ambitions a blow when it denied him early release in 2003. Idarraga persevered. He took some CCRI correspondence courses and six months later was able to tell the Parole Board that URI had accepted him for the September 2004 freshman class. The board agreed to free him in time.

Idarraga did so well at URI that Brown accepted his request for a transfer the next semester. Although Brown offers the opportunity for students to take courses on a pass/fail basis, Idarraga insisted on letter grades for every class to prove his academic ability.

All the while Idarraga worked on a legislative effort at the State House to give felons like him the right to vote. It was through this work that he came to the attention of Corrections Director Wall.

Wall has worked with thousands of inmates in his 31 years in corrections, the last nine as director. It is rare that he writes a recommendation for an inmate. Only once before had an inmate asked for a recommendation to a law school.

Wall told Idarraga he would consider writing the letter but not before the two had a long conversation.

“I was impressed by his candor,” says Wall. “And I was satisfied that he was exactly as he presented himself. Sincere, motivated, and talented. I also realized that the odds against an ex offender can be very high, particularly if he or she is reaching for the stars. There was no doubt in my mind that Andres had the ability, the intellect and the drive to succeed in law school.”

There was also, however, no doubt that people at Yale would have lingering questions about him: Can we trust this guy? Is he really the way he presents himself on paper? What kind of chance are we taking?

And so Wall, himself a graduate of Yale, drove Idarraga to New Haven to meet the dean of the law school.

Idarraga estimates he’ll be $140,000 in debt by the time he gets out of law school. He hopes to some day begin paying his loans off as a lawyer for advocacy agencies fighting for better education for the poor.

His message today to the inmates still behind bars will be this: Use your time inside wisely. Find a passion. Define your own future. Otherwise, “it will be defined for you.”

tmooney@projo.com