Angel Marie Kozeak
Photograph of Angel Marie Kozeak, obtained from the Praxis Center.
Memorial for Angel Marie Kozeak
By her friend Michele Scott
Hi, my name is Michele, and I am honored to share who Angel Marie Kozeak was with you. In prison, we form bonds with each other because it’s like a sisterhood that surpasses what you call family, because these are connections that we forge out of this shared experience because we’re seeking to survive our incarceration and we learn to pull together to make it through each day.
Angel was a veteran of these experiences, and she came in as a youth and, you know, she went through her own set of ups and downs. She was a knucklehead, she went to ad-seg, she had handcuffs put on. But she also began to blossom into someone who we could count on to go to for a listening ear. She gave really good counsel, she had great war stories, and she was the person willing to give an appropriate kick-in-the-butt to the newbies, to the new girls just coming in and struggling with their time and acting out because they didn’t know how to deal with their emotions or what it was like to now be in prison. And we all knew that Angel cared about others in an environment where really the best way to survive was to only care about yourself. But Angel was willing to care about others.
A month before she died, Angel actually really taught me a lesson about who I am. It was late afternoon, it was a really hot day, and we were standing outside the chow hall building in this long line that was sticking down far down the pavement and we had to be six feet apart. And we heard our unit’s PA system call out for a wheelchair pusher to pick up an elderly member of our unit from our job site. And we could see her sitting in her wheelchair way across the yard, waiting for someone to come pick her up. And the announcement was repeated, you know “Wheelchair pusher respond. Come pick up so-and-so.” And no one was responding. And we live in an honor dorm, which is considered kind of a cut above a general population unit. In our honor dorm there’s a criteria. We have an operational procedure and there’s a lot of expectations that we program and behave better than others.
And I was looking at this woman sitting outside in the heat, in a wheelchair, and I said out loud, “You now, you’d think that people in this unit would care. That someone would go over there and push her to chow and we call ourselves an honor dorm unit.” And I was being really sarcastic and standing six feet away... I saw Angel pivot, step out of line, and she started heading straight over to the lady. And in that moment I realized, even as I was only grumpy about the situation, that Angel was impassioned. So I may have talked about it but Angel was all about it. So to me, this is who Angel Marie Kozeak was. And that was one month before she died.
And to know that she was a person who wasn’t thinking about “Oh if I wait two more minutes I’ll be in the chow hall sitting down at a table eating my food...” She saw a need and she stepped into it. And it was such a lesson to me, and made even more poignant by her loss thirty days later. And I’m just grateful that I’m able to honor her, and honor who she was as a human being with you now, and sharing these words. So, thank you.
Transcribed by MOL volunteer Andrew Kornfeld.
Remembrance of Angel Marie Kozeak
By her friend Nora Igova
When Angel passed away it really was such a shock for the whole community because she was so well-known and so loved by so many and nobody really [saw] it coming so fast. It took her like... within a matter of a week or two she was here and then she was not. She was just gone.
And for me it was really personal because I met Angel many years ago and the first time I saw her... I wasn’t born and raised in the states, I was born in southeastern Europe in Bulgaria, so my whole family is back there. My whole family is back in Europe. So when I saw Angel for the first time she reminded me of my mother. That was my first impression. So when I saw her I automatically was drawn to her energy, to her beautiful smile, to her kindness. She’s just a beautiful person inside and out.
So since that day, I told her — I introduced myself and I told her — I’m gonna start calling you Mom. And she’s like “Okay, well you’re my baby.” Since that day, we were very close. So she was my prison Mom. It was really like taking advice from her. I was just drawn to her immediately. Afterwards, we lived together and she showed me even more kindness and more understanding.
For her, being incarcerated since she was 19-years-old and to hold that all this number in the institution, and her biggest fear was to die in prison. She didn’t want to die here. That was her main thing and it was so unfortunate that she had to go and pass away in this environment and not experience the real freedom every person should feel and be surrounded by the loved ones that she really wants because she had family out there that really loved and cared for her.
Of course we did as well. I did so much. I loved Angel more than anybody in this institution really, because she not only reminded me of my biological mom but she was a mother to me in here. Someone to go to and get that great advice and feel close with. Now I know she’s in a better place, I know that. And I know we had a great memorial for her in the building that she lived in, that she was resided in. She used to go in the garden and she’d speak to the birds. She always wanted to be reborn as a bird so I know she is watching us from above. She loved... her favorite bird was a hummingbird. Yeah, she used to have little feeders for them and would put sugar every morning for them. It was just so cute.
She’ll be remembered forever. I just want to say, we still miss her. I mean, when I think of her, I just... It’s just always sadness that overwhelms. It’s overwhelming sadness, but at the same time just puts a smile on my face because she was fearless. She was fearless on so many levels.
Transcribed by MOL volunteer Andrew Kornfeld.
From Mourning Our Losses:
Angel Marie Kozeak was a “tremendously loved and respected” woman, revered by all who knew her. Though she herself did not pass away from COVID-19, her death was an unjust byproduct of the pandemic, swept up in its turmoil and confusion.
Michele Scott, a writer at Central California Women’s Facility, wrote about her friend Angel in pieces published by the Praxis Center and The Marshall Project. On April 8, Michele recalls, Angel requested medical attention: “Angel Marie was feeling really sick, in a lot of pain, turning yellow, could not keep any food down, and losing weight like crazy.” Twenty days later, Angel’s test results came back: aggressive pancreatic cancer. The doctors told Angel that her condition was terminal and that there was nothing they could do. Because of COVID’s restrictions, Angel was placed in quarantine upon returning from the hospital. There, Michele wrote, Angel “had none of her personal property, including her approved email tablet, which had all of her outside family contacts. Angel Marie was too sick to remember phone numbers, and she needed to contact her family to let them know that she was dying and trying to get released under Compassionate Release for people at end of life.”
Many rallied together, uniting behind Angel in advocacy and support. On April 28th, the Comfort Care workers in the Central California Women’s Facility (a volunteer group of women who focus on health-related issues within the facility) reached out to and asked for assistance from members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a grassroots social justice organization comprised of individuals on both the inside and outside and dedicated to challenging “the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people, and communities of color by the prison industrial complex.” Within the skilled nursing facility (SNF) where Angel was quarantined, Pops Jenkins—an “O.G. in SNF”—fought for Angel’s right to use a phone. According to Michele Scott, “Pops went ‘Hollywood’ and refused to lock in her room unless the nurses gave Angel her phone call! Pops made a huge fuss, yelling how she had known Angel for decades and that she was supposed to get access to the phone. By all accounts that we heard, Pops pretty thoroughly cussed out the staff. Angel Marie got her phone call.”
Angel died early on the morning of May 5, 2020. Despite the passionate efforts of many, she never received Compassionate Release; she never got to see her family one last time. The women held a memorial service for Angel on Friday, June 5th. Led by Michele, the Comfort Care women set up tables, chairs, and music in the garden, placing the furniture to ensure a safe, socially-distanced gathering. Decorations included a string of pale blue and tan cardstock butterflies, a poster made by the women in unit 510, and a beautiful piece of art: a guitar with a pair of angel wings on either side and Angel’s name across the bottom. This latter creation was front and center, greeting the mourners as they walked into the garden.
As they spoke to each other, the women who came—many of whom had not seen each other in months—reflected on Angel and the legacy she was leaving behind. According to Michele, “many of the women had been touched by Angel’s ‘original gangster wisdom.’” Though Angel had been “tremendously respected for her ability to lay out prison rules to the newbies,” she also always “took the time to listen.” The women recalled how Angel “had really turned it around”; “she conquered addiction… and eventually landed in an honor dorm, thriving and making it happen.”
Photograph of Angel’s Tree, obtained from the Praxis Center.
The women also designated “Angel’s Tree,” a Chinese Tallow tree in the front of the unit where Angel hung her homemade hummingbird feeder each summer, as a memorial for its eponym. They sat in the dayroom, cutting out tags from donated cards and stringing them together to hang on the branches in dedication to Angel. The tags featured prayers and words of love and respect from the community. Many women who knew Angel asked to personally hang their card tag themselves; even those who did not, who happened to walk by the dayroom as the cutting and stringing was taking place, sought to participate. All of these tags of commemoration will be given to Angel’s family.
Angel didn’t pass directly from COVID, but her story, like the many others who lost their lives to the disease, is shaped by the pandemic. The virus, and the institution’s policies to manage it, stripped Angel of her ability to be with family in her remaining days, to hold her loved ones close. Her story is heartbreaking. We stand with Angel’s family and with the women at California Coalition for Women Prisoners in mourning the passing of a beautiful soul—of a true angel on earth—and in celebrating her life.
This part of the memorial was written by MOL team member Frances Keohane with information from articles by Angel’s friend Michele Scott, published by The Marshall Project and the Praxis Center.
