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Tracy says she thought about Joseph a lot after their first meeting, but she didn't talk to him again until her dance troupe returned to the prison one year later. "We connected again and we started talking, and I said I was ready to start writing him letters," she says. "I was going to treat it like any other relationship. If he wasn't [the] things that I had in mind that I wanted in my personal relationship, then it was going to be done."

At first, Tracy says she didn't know what Joseph did to end up in maximum security prison. "The person that I saw, that I met that day at the dance, was the person that I connected with," she says.

Looking back at his crime, Joseph says he feels remorse. "I was 19 years old," he says. "I was just walking around like a zombie, so I didn't feel like I was living. It kind of feels like not me."

Joseph says he's a changed man since meeting Tracy. "She just gives me the faith to just be me. I can be silly. I can be crazy," he says. "She loves me. I really didn't know what love was. She scared the hell out of me because of the love, and her heart is so open I have no choice but to think about other people. She gives me the strength to just grow."

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