She's one of 18,000 people waiting for a presidential pardon. She knows an answer may take years.
CBSN
Sarah Carlson has been on a decade-long path to redemption since her arrest in 2009. Recently, she bought her first home, completed an internship in addiction counseling, and will soon work toward a degree in social work.
But Carlson has encountered several roadblocks along the way. The Minnesota resident often struggled to secure both housing and work. As a convicted felon, Carlson had to apply for an exemption with the state to work with vulnerable adults with addiction — she had to prove her crime was nonviolent.
"I'm just at a point where I don't want to have that stigma when I go and apply for another job, or I go into my next school that I'm going to go into because you have to do fingerprints when you go to school and you have to do a background check with that school," Carlson explained. "Everywhere I go there will be background checks and I don't want that to be a hindrance for my future."
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.