Slidell native Mary Kay Walden was an average teenager who came from a middle-class family, but she made friends with the wrong people when she was young. Her series of bad choices led to spending her teen years in and out of jail, but today, she's now mentoring teenagers who are in dire need of support.

At 17 years old, Walden was involved in a theft that resulted in a conviction. In 1977, she was tried as an adult in Judge John W. Greene's court. He gave her three years probation.

But her probation was revoked when she was involved in another crime involving narcotics. She was supposed to be sentenced to St. Gabriel Penitentiary, but Greene sentenced her to a drug rehab program called Odyssey House. She didn't have an addiction problem, but at the time, the judge saw the rehab center

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