Velocity - Magazine - Page 12
WHITTAKER DRIVES
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
By Damon Bennett
Jessica Whittaker drives a bus for the Omaha Regional Transit Authority
through the same city where she committed her crimes. She got there, she will
tell you, by way of a phrase: “Can you Amy this?”
“Oh, look at you. You’re a little
girl, you’re short.’”
That was what one of the men in
asked her point-blank about getting her
agreed to train her and she finished
CDL. Doty told her she would pass. So
their six-week training program in
Whittaker showed up. For every class.
under three. She spent most of 2025
driving a semi.
the room with Whittaker said during a
Every morning at 8 a.m., they drove
class in Southeast Community College’s
her from work release to the Milford
UPWARD program. She was training
Campus. She spent every day on the
she could see the math wasn’t
for her commercial driver’s license
road—to Lincoln, to Omaha, to small
working—two or three days a month
alongside four other students. By the
towns nearby.
with her family. She needed to be home.
end, she was the only one of the five
who finished.
“I looked at him and said I’m going to
It was Doty who took her to get her
She found one driving a city bus for
her graduation. When Whittaker got
the Omaha Regional Transit Authority.
be here,” Whittaker said. “At the end,
I was literally the only person who
get her photo taken for her license, Doty
made it.”
arranged to have the DMV take her
by a single mom with six kids. She
joined the military as soon as she could,
but got kicked out and went to jail for
robbery at 18. After her release, she had
a child and was incarcerated again on
drug charges.
photo at the prison.
Now Whittaker is one of UPWARD’s
most public advocates. She talks about
It is amazing what
second chance
opportunities will do.
thinking. “I can’t tell him not to let the
world beat him up while I’m letting
the world beat me up. I started taking
classes and ultimately ended up in work
release where I met Amy Doty.”
Doty, the dean of UPWARD, would
become the gravitational center of
Whittaker’s next chapter. She introduced
her to the UPWARD program, and
10
the program as a voluntary one—about
how the moment a student signs up
is the moment they’re declaring they
want to invest in themselves. Thanks to
”
and get out. But it wasn’t. She fought a
“I can’t do this,” Whittaker remembers
in, I now work for,” Whittaker said.
opportunities will do.”
“
last: keep her head down, do the time,
diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.
“I work for the city bus in Omaha.
The same city I committed my crimes
“It is amazing what second chance
This time was supposed to be like the
lot. Then she got the news her son was
She needed a different route.
driver’s license and Doty who attended
sent back from work release and didn’t
Whittaker grew up in Omaha, raised
But coming home for Thanksgiving,
In the Whittaker household, that
kind of move had a name: “Can you
Amy this?”
“Amy has this thing, where I say
‘Can you Amy this?’ and she does it,”
Whittaker said. “And, oh my god, she
hasn’t failed me yet. Anytime she asks
me to do anything, anything she has
ever stood behind, I’m 100% with it.”
After graduating from the program,
Whittaker found a job with Grand Island
people like Doty, Whittaker also knows
SCC will give students the tools they
need to be successful in whatever comes
next for them.
“I’m watching other people become
chefs and CDL holders, and it is just
leaps and bounds on changing for
people to not become incarcerated
again,” Whittaker said. “Nobody would
know I was in prison. They can’t even
look at me and imagine that. I’m just a
regular person again, and that’s really
all I wanted. I feel like when you serve
your time, you should get that.”
Express driving over the road. They
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