Person of the Week: Jeff Henderson

Oct. 17, 2008— -- After doing hard time, many felons end up on the street or back in prison, but Jeff Henderson made a complete 180: He went from a crack dealer on the streets in California pulling in $35,000 a week, to a prison inmate, and then to a celebrated chef.

His love for cooking started in the least likely of places: the prison kitchen.

"When I first went to prison, I pretty much felt I was done, I was finished," Henderson said. "I blamed everyone for my shortcomings. But it wasn't until several years after my incarceration when I began to value education, I began to accept responsibility for my past. And that planted the seed for change."

During his 10 years behind bars, Henderson landed a fortuitous jail-time job in the kitchen, where he learned how to cook.

"The basics of cooking in prison is a little different from most restaurants," Henderson said. "You don't have the six-burner stoves or the sauté pans.

"We made sure we were putting out a great product, you know, for the prison population," he said. "We took pride in what we did. ... Food is one of the most important things to a person who is incarcerated."

In prison, Henderson read cookbooks from all over the world, ordered curriculum from the Culinary Institute of America and studied.

"It was through reading, it was through exposing myself to inmates in prison who were Wall Street business moguls, who were ... intellectuals, who saw the intelligence and the potential I had, which allowed me to be able to believe that I can become successful and I can shake the dark past of a criminal lifestyle," he said.

With a sense of hope and drive, Henderson was released in 1996, into a world full of new ingredients and produce that he had never tasted or experienced before.

He started as a dishwasher, soaking up everything he could from other chefs. Eventually, a mentor at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas took a chance on Henderson.

"I had to defuse the prison stigma. I had to make the felony jacket disappear," Henderson said. "I had to straighten up the way I walked. You know, I had to clean-shave my face. I put make-up to cover my earring hole up, and I learned to smile."