“Twenty years ago, Robert W. VanSumeren, then 19, stood nervously in a Michigan courtroom as Hillsdale County Circuit Court Judge Michael Smith sentenced him to six years in prison for a string of local robberies.”

“‘I was terrified. I thought my life was finished,’ he said. ‘I felt really lost and wondered how I’d ever get through it.’”

“On Nov. 22, almost two decades to the day, VanSumeren, now 40, returned to that same courtroom and stood again in front of Smith. This time, VanSumeren was asking the judge who had sentenced him as a teenager to swear him in as a new attorney. After finishing his prison sentence, he had attended college, then law school, hoping to give back to the community he had once stolen from.”

“‘I didn’t know if the judge would go for it, but I thought it was worth asking,’ said VanSumeren, who lives in Jackson, Mich., and passed the Michigan state bar exam on the first try. Smith said he was astonished by the request. But he was also delighted.”

Read more at The Washington Post.