Ex-Cons To Blago: 'It Doesn't Hit Until First Strip Search'
UPDATED 06/28/11 6:55 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Some former high-profile federal inmates are offering some insight for Rod Blagojevich, now that the disgraced former governor is facing time in jail on corruption charges.
Ex-convicts Scott Fawell, an aide to Gov. George Ryan, and Jim Laksi, the former Chicago City Clerk, say that inmates won't care about Blagojevich's powerful political past--or his TV celebrity appearance on "The Apprentice."
CBS 2's Derrick Blakley reports.
"You can't be governor of a prison," said Fawell.
It may be tough for Blagojevich to change his ways, but prison guards will make it happen, Fawell said.
"They will break out down in some fashion," he said. "Whether than means scrubbing the floor or cleaning a toilet. They'll put you in your place.
"It's not a place where you go in there smiling, glad-handing and back-slapping."
Fawell jokingly says he spent 52 fun-filled months in a South Dakota federal prison on corruption charges while he was a top aide for ex-Gov. George Ryan, who is currently spending time in jail.
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The convicted former president of Cicero calls Blagojevich the most arrogant man she's ever met.
She said it might not hit him until he walks through the prison gates that he won't be seeing Chicago for a long time.
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"You are in so much in a stupor .. it doesn't hit you until the first strip search," Maltese said.
As a mother of a young daughter at the time of her sentencing, Loren-Maltese said she feels badly for Blagojevich's two young girls and she hopes he will be assigned to a prison close enough so that they can easily visit. Until that time, she urges the former governor to spend as much time as possible with them.
There's no sentencing date yet for Blagojevich but he faces significant time behind bars.
He spoke briefly with reporters this morning outside his Chicago home saying he hopes to keep his home life as normal as possible as long as possible, and he hopes to show his daughters how to stand up to adversity.
