“I never expected to meet the type of men I ended up meeting,” said Mike Bonnel about prisoners he encounters at San Quentin as a volunteer. “There are a lot of people whose hearts God had touched, just like me.”
After 29 years as a firefighter, he now enjoys a slower pace by serving San Quentin prisoners. “I always liked helping people,” he said of his life then and now.
Bonnel oversaw five firehouses as a Battalion Chief Commander in the San Francisco Fire Department. He was instrumental in writing procedures for high-rise structure fires.
His involvement with San Quentin goes back to the ‘70s when he and his wife, Linda, visited prisoners under the M-2 Sponsor program.
M-2 was a faith-based program that provided visitors to prisoners who otherwise would have no visitors.
“When I first heard that he was going out to San Quentin, I wasn’t too sure about it. But he loves people, and likes to fill that place of helping those people who others don’t want to help,” said Linda.
Mike was also involved in the Cell-to-Cell Ministry, which primarily brought religious services to the prisoners in the reception center.