Coe HENDERSONVILLE — Interim Prison Ministry Coordinator David Coe is still in the mountains scrambling to find 50 prisoners who registered for the Residents Encounter Christ Retreat, which should have occurred three months ago.
Tropical Storm Helene interrupted the scheduled retreat and forced over 2,000 inmates from five correctional institutions to evacuate to other prisons scattered throughout the state.
Coe came out of retirement after he was offered the interim position just weeks before the storm hit and remains excited about his new role.
“I’m 78 years old, but Moses was 80 when God called him,” Coe said. “I wanted to see us flourish, because we have such a great opportunity to bring the love of Christ to families.”
Increasing prisoner interest and a crew of active volunteers were growing the ministry in the mountains by “leaps and bounds,” he said. Helene brought that progress to a standstill.
Coe, who lives in Hendersonville, has a special connection to these mountains, and after 35 years of involvement, he has a passion for the prisoners, too.
“I have an ulterior motive; the reason I go to prison is to see Jesus, and I do. I see Him there all the time. I’ve seen more miracles behind bars than I have anywhere else,” Coe stated.
One of those miracles might be the retreat. Inmates, along with over 40 volunteers, typically gathered twice a year at the Mountain View Correctional gymnasium to celebrate Mass, receive reconciliation and break bread. Many of the prisoners are so uplifted they decide to continue in the Catholic faith by joining the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, with the goal of eventually receiving the sacraments and devoting their lives to Jesus.
“We take a prison gymnasium and turn it into holy ground,” Coe said. “It is incredibly beautiful to witness an inmate walking into confession.”
Coe and his team of 11 also visited prisons and jails across the diocese and brought needed rosaries and donated Bibles from TAN Books. That activity is slowly resuming as prison occupants return.
Displaced inmates recently repopulated Craggy Correctional, Western Correctional Center for Women and the Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women in mid-November. The delay was due to the lack of drinkable water in most of Buncombe County.
Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution and Mountain View Correctional Institution neighbor each other and were not so lucky. They remain vacant due to water issues and are continuing repairs.
Some of the displaced prisoners will never find their way back to their pre-storm cells. Craggy Correctional, for example, is replacing all the minimum-custody, or low-risk, inmates with slightly elevated, medium-custody prisoners.
Coe and his crew’s most recent visit to Craggy Correctional was in Advent 2024. In the prison chapel, he had 15 new faces stare back at him as he read the Gospel and dissected Psalm 103.
The only familiar face was an incarcerated man he ministered to in a different prison months before. Coe plans to go back weekly to see if any of the previous detainees return and to work with the new ones. If retreat participants are not moved into one of the reopened institutions, Coe is still determined to reach them.
“We can try to track them down. If the need is there, we have the methods to do it,” Coe said. “I will go to any prison, anywhere and anytime. Please pray for us and the families of those who are incarcerated.”
— Lisa Geraci