After years of renting, Debra Holbrook now has her own place to call home thanks to a financing program available to TDCJ employees working in hazardous duty positions.

Theirs is a sunny story. It begins with two little girls dressed in western wear sitting on a pony and ends happily nearly 60 years later with them retiring from TDCJ together. It’s a story about friendship and how it endures even after years of separation. Mostly, though, it’s a story about fate.

Terri Bales has traveled all across the United States and to Canada aboard a motorcycle. But she doesn’t need to hop on a Harley to cover the distance she’s traveled outside the TDCJ Travel Office in Huntsville over the past 25 years. She doesn’t because Bales has spent her entire career in the office responsible for keeping the agency on the move.