With a stroke of the presidential pen, people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach were free. Many had no idea how they would get home.
After President Donald Trump signed pardons and commutations on Jan. 20, an estimated 300 people were released from 75 prisons in 35 states, according to Gary Heavin, a Texas philanthropist who raised funds for an operation to meet each of the prisoners and help them get back home.
“Everyone was scrambling to make sure there were people at the gates of these prisons” to welcome the former prisoners and help them with basic needs, Heavin told The Epoch Times.
The volunteers ensured that the ex-prisoners “were warm and fed, with a hotel to go to, and a phone to reconnect to their families,” he said. Volunteers also provided transportation, including commercial airline tickets or flights via private jets, including one that Heavin owns.
These volunteers and the people they helped told The Epoch Times that emotions overflowed as they shared time together. They described relief that the prisoners were freed and could return home. But they also decried how the U.S. justice system handled the Jan. 6 cases and expressed concern over the continuing challenges that the ex-prisoners face.
“There were bad actors on Jan. 6. But whatever stupid things they did—like breaking glass or turning a table over—four years in prison covers it, not 21,” Heavin said. “If we care about injustice, then we have to care about these people.”
After Trump won the Nov. 5, 2024, election, the volunteer groups began planning for pardons and commutations, Heavin said. Trump had campaigned on promises to free the Jan. 6 “political prisoners.” But no one knew if—or when—the order would come.
Within hours of his inauguration, Trump commuted 14 sentences of serious offenders and pardoned the remaining 1,569 people.
Sharing Stories in Flight
As her husband flew the plane, Diane Heavin kept company with the passengers.The Heavins shed tears as they heard tales of the prisoners’ ordeals and watched the freed men reunite with loved ones.
“I’ve never cried so much in my life,” Gary Heavin said, even though he has witnessed plenty of heartache while assisting people at scenes of earthquakes and hurricanes.
Helping those in need has been a major focus for the Heavins, even while they owned a major business, Curves fitness centers for women. In 2005, 13 years after the Heavins founded the company, Curves had expanded to 9,300 locations in 38 countries, making it the world’s 10th-largest franchise firm. The Heavins sold Curves in 2012 and retired, freeing up more time for philanthropy.
Each mission is an adventure, the Heavins said. They said they feel compelled to give back because they have been so successful.
“To whom much has been given, much is expected,“ Gary Heavin said. ”We’ve been very blessed, and honestly, rescuing people—you get more out of it than you put into it.”
Powerful Moments
The Heavins are parents of four, grandparents of five, and great-grandparents of three. They were moved when they witnessed children reuniting with the prisoners.Describing himself as “a manly guy who flies and stuff,” Gary Heavin said he teared up when he saw “a little girl who’s maybe 4 years old, hasn’t seen her father in two years, running, yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’”
Diane Heavin said it affected her deeply when one of the prisoners exhibited what she said seemed to be post-traumatic stress disorder. He suddenly became distrustful of her, saying: “Wait a minute; you know too much. You might be from the government.”
She spent several minutes convincing him that was untrue. Then he made a statement that hit her hard: “I didn’t know there were any good people left.”
She replied, “Yes, there are a lot of good people.”
More Difficulties Loom
Diane Heavin said the released prisoners’ lives have been upended severely. One man told her that “he just felt a great emptiness” and that “he didn’t know where to begin to pick up the pieces,” she said.Many of the released prisoners need to find work, but they don’t know how to overcome the obstacles that their incarceration created. One man told her: “If I get a job and I don’t have a car, how am I going to get there? ... My credit’s been ruined while I was in prison for two years. So, you know, I can’t buy a car.”
Some have little or no family support after their marriages broke up and once-close relatives became estranged amid the politically charged prosecutions. And some Jan. 6 defendants “don’t have homes to go to,” Diane Heavin said.
“It really just breaks my heart that these people who were just standing up for their First Amendment rights could have been subjected to this kind of punishment, and then on top of that, lose everything,” she said.
Shelley Freeman, a volunteer who assisted Pete Schwartz, said that a correctional officer told her that if not for the volunteers helping the released prisoners, “they would be let loose and sent to a bus station.” She told The Epoch Times that she paid out of her own pocket to provide housing, food, personal items, and a cellphone for him.
Like many Jan. 6 prisoners, Schwartz was held in a prison far from family members, making visits difficult or impossible. He was freed near Freeman’s California home—more than 2,000 miles away from his parents in Kentucky.
Nonviolent Man Grateful for Help
The first prisoner the Heavins picked up was Glenn Allen Brooks, 64. They flew him from Georgia to Virginia, where his sister lives.
On Inauguration Day, word had spread through Brooks’s prison that freedom might be imminent for him and two other Jan. 6 prisoners. But Brooks didn’t believe it until, as fellow inmates say, he was “walking out the blue door,” which leads from that institution to the outside world.
A pair of ambassadors for the Patriot Freedom Project, Nicky and Tim Long, greeted Brooks with a hand-drawn posterboard that read, “Patriot Glenn Brooks, are you ready to go home?”
The Longs handed Brooks a winter coat, four suitcases full of clothes, food, and an iPhone. He felt showered with love and blessings. They drove him to a hotel room provided by the group. Hours later, the Longs took him to an airport in Savannah. There, the Heavins awaited with their private jet.
Friendship Forged
“There was a lot of prayer, a lot of thankfulness, a lot of joy,” Brooks said.Brooks said he feels that in the short time he and the Heavins spent together, they forged a lifelong friendship.
He and the Heavins discovered that they have a mutual interest: going on Christian mission trips to help impoverished people in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Brooks is also an aviation aficionado.
“I found them precious and dear people,” he said.
Yet Brooks said he feels disoriented as he tries to chart a course for his new, post-Jan. 6 life.
He left California, where he lived for many years, and moved to Florida. His marriage ended. And several of the seven children from his once-blended family have distanced themselves from him, he said.
Pair of Police Officers Reunite
A Jan. 6 prisoner who flew with the Heavins, retired Boston police officer Joseph Robert Fisher, 54, told The Epoch Times that he feared he might be left out of Trump’s pardons. Trump had signaled that he was less inclined to grant mercy to violent offenders. Fisher described his actions as “on the cusp of what might be considered violent,” although no officer was harmed.
The officer confronted Fisher.
“He grabbed me by the shoulders,” Fisher said. “I grabbed him by the shoulders. He picked me up, dropped me down on the ground. At that point, I was just like: ‘Holy smokes. Like, what’s going on here?’”
As a man who devoted his life to law enforcement, Fisher was in disbelief over how badly the situation escalated.
“It was terrible. ... it was like my world had crashed,” Fisher said. “Never was it my intent to go in there and get involved and mix it up with any cops or anything like that.”
More than two years later, SWAT teams raided Fisher’s home and arrested him on Jan. 6-related charges. The FBI targeted Fisher after internet sleuths matched Jan. 6, 2021, video footage with images of Fisher’s good police work: He risked his life to search for suspects in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
After protracted legal battles, Fisher could see that the deck appeared to be stacked against Jan. 6 defendants. To get it over with, he pleaded guilty. In May 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison. But that time was cut short when Trump pardoned Fisher, enabling him to return to his wife of 26 years, Debra—a fellow officer who continues to serve in the Boston police department.
“It was a great feeling to have a hug and a kiss without having to wear the lime-green jumpsuit they make you wear during visitations,” Fisher said.
The Heavins picked up Fisher at a Pennsylvania prison and flew him back home to Massachusetts within an hour or so, saving his wife a 13-hour round-trip drive.
“They couldn’t have been more gracious. They were the nicest people on Earth,” Fisher said of the Heavins. “The grace end of it, from all the people that helped us out, was just absolutely amazing.”
