For the better part of 20 years Chris Waguespack was confined to a 6- by 9-foot jail cell, staring down jailhouse bullies, hurling obscenities during inmate football games and intent on getting out alive to smoke one more rock of crack cocaine.

On his brief stints on the outside between convictions, the hulking workout fanatic “stole anything that wasn’t tied down,” including kids’ bikes and even a car engine he lugged for several thousand feet on his back at 3 a.m. His habit was large, but the pain inside larger, he said.

He drank uncontrollably to calm himself, slept on the streets, ran with stone-cold criminals and even once ripped off a dealer’s supply during a drug transaction, a move that nearly got him killed. He fled, and as he turned he heard the gunshots. Sparks bounced up from the concrete, the bullets just barely missing his legs, he said.

Chris Waguespack was first arrested at 17 and spent the next 20 years in and out of prison. Fourteen years ago he found God and when he was released in 2000, his life took a turn for the better. He'€™s remarried with kids and owns his own construction company. (Staff Photo by Matthew Penix)

He was a loner, with no friends but the drugs. His parents, when he would knock on their door, often turned off the lights and shooed him away. He wanted to end it all by jumping in front of an oncoming car.

It was the beginning of the end.

Then a light turned on, and the greatest day of his life unfolded, one that sent him from the jailhouse to the rich house, rubbing elbows with the same millionaires who used to snub him.

The secret was simple: “I became a junkie for Jesus that day,” he said.

Fourteen years ago, while serving five years of a 10-year sentence in a northern Louisiana prison for a charge he would not disclose, Waguespack said he found God.

It was in the mid 80’s, and Waguespack, a lineman on the inmate football team, unleashed his inner anger on the gridiron field, intent on crunching the opposing team’s bones. Curse words spewed from this mouth, echoing through the jail yard.

“Man, you need to find the lord, Allah, Buddha, somebody,” his coach, a Muslim man, told Waguespack. “You need help.”

It was the beginning of a new era.

Days later, Waguespack, who now runs a booming Slidell construction business, Waguespack Construction, a 29-employee outfit that specialize in raised homes, attended a chapel sermon.

He had run out of other options. He tried AA, NA and every other treatment center he knew of. Nothing worked. Plus, with 44 misdemeanor arrests and 15 felony arrests — not all resulting in convictions — he was staring at a multiple offender sentence.

During his last stint in jail, state lawmakers approved a bill that sent repeat offenders away for up to life. If he didn’t shape up now, when he got out, he knew he’d fall back into his old ways, get arrested and be slapped with a multiple offender bill.

He listened intently to the preacher, searching for the answers. They soon hit him.

“For the first time in my life somebody said something that made sense to me,” he said, remembering the sermon as if yesterday.

“That’s when the lights came on. It was like, ‘Wow!’”

It was an instant transformation. He doesn’t even remember how he returned to his cell. That night he gave up smoking cold turkey.

“It’s like I floated back. It’s an experience. It was something I can’t explain other than the Lord,” he said.

Now Waguespack, 45, is an ordained minister, he said, smiling as he whipped out his wallet and fetched for the proof, finding a certified card from Malise Prieto, St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court.

“Amazing,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “I never dreamed I’d be here right now.”

Waguespack is a ripped man, sporting a black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of his construction firm that bulges around his thick arm. He sports a chunky gold chain, diamond studded earrings, a sandy goatee and visible tattoos along his arms.

He speaks in passionate bursts, dropping witty one-liners — “I started slinging tracks instead of rocks” — and tidbits of God’s praise — “If He can do it for me, He can do it for anybody.”

He looks like your older cooler, tougher, brother, but his eyes now show a hint of vulnerability. He’s still macho, but macho enough to be vulnerable.

Some might say he’s earned the right to be this way.

After finding God in jail, he was cautious not to fall into “jailhouse religion,” a term used for inmates who say they are rehabilitated, then return to shady ways when paroled.

He attended Mass every day, clutching his Bible throughout the mess hall and preaching to anyone who would listen.

“Even though I was in jail, those were the best days of my life,” he said. “I was bouncing around with my Bible, all happy, and I even led captains and corporals to the Lord. Everyone looked at me though like they’d been vaccinated with pickle juice, a sour face.”

With about a year left on his sentence, Waguespack was enrolled in the St. Tammany Parish Jail work release program, where he worked during the day and reported to the facility at night. It’s there he gained confidence and his first real paycheck ever.

Often times when released in years past, he was tossed to the streets like a “dog returning to vomit,” he said.

But now he had a client base to work with.

At first he was “slinging fish” to people on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. He skimped and saved his earnings then bought a power saw, cord and nail bag. Growing up shadowing his brother in the carpentry business, he developed his trade and parlayed it to build two people a garage. Then two more people employed his service. With that money he bought a compressor and other equipment. He eventually bought a yellow Ford pickup truck for work.

The day he was released from jail, he had clients lined up across town. Waguespack Construction was formed.

“God had changed my life,” he said.

Then another blow. His two daughters from his first marriage, Kiesha, 21, and Celeste, 23, died within six months of each other. Each had ingested too many “pills” and never woke up, Waguespack said.

He gave the eulogy at Kiesha’s funeral, ministering to her friends. By the time Celeste died, it was too hard to minister another funeral.

When questioned if he faltered in his faith, Waguespack looked one directly in the eye and said, “No.”

“I have a reason to lay down and die,” he said. “But I can’t. I was prepared with this heartache to break this generation’s curse. I’m here to help.”

He instead uses the experience to preach at Way Builders, a non-profit church for struggling drug addicts and inmates on Helenburg Road in Covington. About 50 guys attend weekly, he said, and it boasts a recidivism rate of 45 percent, far lower than 80 percent at other programs, he said.

“I watched these guys grow, pay bills, live. I watch them pay their rent check now, and their chest sticks out. It puts hair on your chest to pay a bill.”

Just like it has for Waguespack. When he first was paroled, he had no home and refinished a friend’s 600-square-foot shack to give an address to his parole officer. Now he owns more than 30 lots and his own home with a built-in pool near Lacombe. He plans to build a dream house next year.

And instead of his old yellow beat up Ford, in his driveway sits a shiny new yellow Hummer. Nearby his newest daughter Arial, 5, who he had with his new wife April, — “the only two AAs in my life now” — tosses fish food out for the reindeer that are “coming for Christmas.”

He surveys the area. In his yard snowmen are blinking, and Rudolf’s red nose is shining bright. Christmas music is playing in the background. Across the street, he owns three lots.

“I can’t believe this is my life,” he said.