Correspondent photo / Chris Travers United Returning Citizens Executive Director Dionne Dowdy-Lacey stands in the main hallway at the URC office suite on Belmont Avenue earlier this week.

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s a common courtesy to hold a door open for the next person coming into a building. Maybe it’s out of respect for the age of that person or to be helpful to someone overburdened with children, pets or packages. Maybe it’s just one’s chivalrous nature.

For the past 10 years, 55-year-old Dionne Dowdy-Lacey has made it her daily mission to hold open different kinds of doors. They are doors to opportunity for people seeking to build new and productive lives after incarceration.

Dowdy-Lacey, a South High School graduate and Youngstown resident, is the executive director of United Returning Citizens, a nonprofit organization she started 10 years ago on a shoestring budget, a ton of faith and self-confidence.

As she guided a guest through the offices at 611 Belmont Ave. on the city’s North Side, she said she never dreamed she and URC would have come this far by now. She was confident the organization would grow, but “I thought it would be just me and a small office somewhere.”

Today, URC is in a sprawling first-floor suite facing Scott Street, two blocks away from Stambaugh Stadium, on a square one-block campus that includes other social service agencies and providers.

Dowdy-Lacey draws a straight line from an often-turbulent past to her very meaningful present.

“I had a violent past,” she said. “The first thing I wanted to do (when confronting a bad situation) was resort to violence.”

She said the anger stemmed from her youth.

“My father went to the penitentiary. He was gone. I just wanted a white picket fence life and the kind of stability that classmates and other family members enjoyed,” she said. “I was angry because (her upbringing) wasn’t the family dynamic I wanted.”

Dowdy-Lacey’s anger exploded twice into criminal actions. She pleaded guilty to an aggravated assault charge when she was 28 and pleaded guilty to another fourth-degree felony assault nine years later.

When she emerged from her second offense, her husband found a path into prison and left her with three children to feed and shelter.

“I had to get a job,” she said, adding that realities of huge obstacles to good employment set in. “Your background (becomes) a barrier or hindrance for you.”

Dowdy-Lacey decided to pick up the pieces and focus on the good parts of her life.

“Even when I encountered those barriers, I really never thought I could not do what I wanted to do. It was my mindset. It really was,” she said. “I just really never felt I was a felon.”

She confronted her anger problems. “I went to therapy,” she said, “and I decided I was going to live a new life.”

Today, when obstacles arise, Dowdy-Lacey accepts them and explores alternatives.

She said she neither ignores nor suppresses the memories of her felony convictions, but she doesn’t let them define her, either. She said she uses them to inspire others and to remind herself that in spite of them, she has built United Returning Citizens to its present capacity.

As Dowdy-Lacey rebuilt her life brick by heavy brick, she started figuring out how to help others in the same situation — like a woman who jumps into a deep hole much to the shock of a guy who fell into the same hole. When the guy asks her why she jumped down there with him, she replies, “Because I know a way out.”

When the first guy asked the second why he jumped down there with him, the first replied, “Because I know a way out.”

There is nothing that Dowdy-Lacey has seen or done that is not a comfort to a person returning to society. She knows the way out and shares it.

Dowdy-Lacey became a VISTA volunteer and assisted marginalized people for three years. “Working as a VISTA gave me an enormous amount of knowledge,” she said, on how to facilitate assistance between providers and those who need it.

Among the most successful programs she helped organize as a VISTA were job fairs that brought returning citizens together with lots of employers willing to hire someone with a criminal record. The job fairs also connected Community Legal Aid to returning citizens in need of expungements.

“There are 1,100 collateral sanctions in which felons cannot participate,” she said. “That means you can’t get a certificate to be a nurse, to cut hair, or attain other opportunities (because you’re) a felon.”

Not all felonies qualify for expungement, but for those that do, Dowdy-Lacey said, it opens doors to a much brighter future.

In an ironic twist, the nature of Dowdy-Lacey’s own felonies do not qualify for expungement, but it has never hindered her passion to help others.

Dowdy-Lacey’s association with Community Legal Aid ultimately led to their invitation for her to join its board of directors. For four years, she served with distinction as board president of the eight-county legal nonprofit based in Akron with offices in Youngstown, Warren and Canton.

Dionne Dowdy-Lacey’s life is proof of the power of the second chance. For those in need, she is holding the door open.

To suggest a Friday profile, contact Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com or Features Editor Ashley Fox at afox@tribtoday.com.