Good Day Sacramento's Cody Stark inspires former prisoner to get on better path
SACRAMENTO — From prison to pushing for change, meet a former prisoner determined to get on a better path.
We're talking about someone who served hard time for drugs and attempted murder. He's now on a mission to change lives after he says someone at our station changed his.
When Ivan Thomasson releases his words, there's a sense of freedom he's still getting used to. Ivan spent 34 years, more than half of his life, in prison.
"My world, and I call it my world because if you ask me anything about any prison in California, I can tell you about it blindfolded, upside down," he said.
His world came to a grinding halt when life on the outside went on.
"I wasn't here when my grandmother left," he said. "My grandmother was my world, and the coldest place to lose everything you love is in prison."
Ivan didn't just live behind bars. He was E-08-086 in prison, where he learned to survive.
"Cats getting raped. Yeah, that takes place. Cats getting beat up, [and] forced to join gangs. That takes place," he said. He added, "I can sit here right now, take an aluminum can, a nail and make a knife that would kill you because you wouldn't even know that I done hit you that many times."
When peace wasn't an option, Ivan had one escape: his music.
"I used to use ping pong balls. We had metal tables, and we'd make the bass sound and I'd be in there 'Boom, boom kish, boom, boom, boom, plew!" he said.
"So music kept you going too through it all?" CBS13's Marlee Ginter asked.
"Yeah, yeah, because in my head, I kept a beat going," Ivan responded.
Music kept him going, but there was something else that made him smile.
"One of my partners one day was talking to me one morning. You know, I had an attitude. 'Man, you need to loosen up. You need to go watch Good Day. Go watch Cody Stark.' 'I don't watch that corny stuff man,' " Ivan said. "I looked at him and he said, 'Man, go.' And he kind of had more rank than me, so."
So Ivan did what he was told and turned the TV to Good Day on KMAX31 to watch Cody Stark.
"I was trying my hardest not to let this dude affect me. 'I'm going to be hard. You're not going to change my day,' " Ivan said. "But the cornier he got, the more I started laughing and the tension started to ease up – and it changed my mood."
Every day, he got up with other prisoners escaping the hard life to watch Cody.
"My prison nickname became White Urkel," Cody told Marlee.
Ivan had just as much of an impact on Cody. In fact, before every live segment, Cody thinks about Ivan, knowing his words could change someone's life.
"It sounds like it changed you, even as a journalist," Marlee told Cody.
"My heart got like four sizes bigger, and it totally changed the way I think about my job," Cody responded.
"People that are incarcerated are the hardest people in the world to please, to move, to get approval from," Ivan said. "Cody earned that from us, kept us laughing. That's a good dude."
It's not always easy, but Ivan has his smile back and is now living life to his own tune. He finally released his first album, which was 40 years in the making, hoping his words inspire kids to stay off the path to prison.
From beat down to setting his own beat, Ivan... Is living one "good day" at a time - writing music moving the next generation to make better choices.
"I just hope it touches somebody in here, that they don't just hear it here. They hear it and feel it in here," Ivan said, gesturing to his mind and then his heart, "and understand that the road I went down, man, several people went down it, but I don't think it affected them as it affected me."
What better way to reach the masses to spur change than through music, the universal language? When he's not making music, Ivan's now a full-time truck driver.
You can check out Ivan's music here. His stage name Eyez Loc.
