Jodi Whitt remembers the routine: arrest, intake cell, 72 hours of waiting, 30 days inside, then release with nothing but the clothes on her back. Back to addiction. Back to jail. Repeat. "I spent years in and out of the jail — it wasn't like I had one stay here," she says. "I had a revolving door of incarceration for over 20 years."
Then something changed. In 2019, Whitt got sober, entered treatment, and enrolled in a University of Kansas technology education program for formerly incarcerated women. A few years later, she made a decision that would transform her own life and hundreds of others: "I wanted to go back into the jail and help the women, because that's where I needed the help. That's where I needed the intervention."
Today, most mornings Whitt starts by doing her hair and makeup, feeding her cat, and driving to the Shawnee County jail in Topeka, Kansas. Her desk there is decorated with affirming quotes, a ceramic white unicorn, and a small blue-fringed Magic of Rotary banner. She opens her laptop and begins a new day — not as an incarcerated woman, but as the person who supports them.
Whitt works with the Rotary Club of Community Action Against Human Trafficking, a cause-based club formed in 2021 to fight human trafficking through prevention education, survivor assistance, and advocacy. The club is the passion project of Patti Mellard, whom Topeka Mayor Spencer Duncan describes as "stubborn in the right way, doesn't take no for an answer, doesn't let things get her down."
Mellard wasn't originally thinking about the jail when she started the club. But early members raised an alarming issue: when women were released from the Shawnee County jail, vulnerable and without resources, traffickers were often waiting for them in the parking lot. Across the country, traffickers track release dates and targets — sometimes even posting bail as leverage to control women.
That realization sparked the club's largest project: Intersection to Care. Launched in 2022 with support from a Rotary Foundation global grant, the initiative has transformed how the Shawnee County jail supports women. What began as a resource and mentorship program has grown to include technology classes, movement and meditation, health and art therapy, supportive housing, and on-demand doula services. The club has become a key reentry service provider in Shawnee County, fundamentally interrupting the cycle of incarceration for many women there.
Whitt, now a mentor to women leaving jail, sees the impact up close. "Sometimes I don't believe it's true," she says. "Sometimes I can't believe this is my life now." For women stepping out of that revolving door she once knew so well, Intersection to Care offers something radical: not just resources, but someone who understands exactly what they're going through — because she lived it.