From the Cell Block to the Runway: Former Teen Inmate Gets New Life With Mentor

Nov. 26, 2010— -- A former Texas inmate who found a new life as a cherished member of his mentor's family is now strutting his stuff on the runway, a long walk from his life in a cell.

"It was a too-good-to-be-true type of thing so I really had to have it register in my head," said Mack White of his newfound family.

White was just 16 years old when he was convicted of aggravated robbery and sent to a maximum security juvenile prison in Gainesville, Texas.

He was in state custody in 2008 when the Grapevine Faith High School hosted a team of inmates from the Gainesville prison for a football game. At the urging of the high school's coach half the cheerleaders were re-assigned to cheer for the inmates. Half of the fans in the stands did as well.

It was at that game where White, acting as the manager for the inmates' team, met Carmen Studer, a producer who would eventually become family.

A team of local filmmakers who had come to the school to make a movie about the game's inspirational message later visited the Gainesville prison to interview some of the inmates who participated and met White.

Word of his story filtered back to Studer, who was a producer on the project.

"The people that came back to me were the ones that were talking about Mack," she said. "Mack stood out. The staff talked really highly of him so everybody wanted to help Mack."

After the two met, White was stunned when Studer and his family invited him to live with them in their Dallas-area home. They would be his mentors and show him the love he'd never known.

That first night they all spent together was uncomfortable for all, White told "Good Morning America" today.

"I think everyone was scared," he said. "Everyone in the house probably locked their doors."

"My family -- my husband and I, my kids, had previously taken in kids," Studer said.

"Now, we've never taken in an ex-felon, but we had taken kids into the house. And they've lived with us for the summers or we've paid for them to go to school," she said. "And so, we were very used to helping or mentoring kids."

It was a slow process. But gradually White, now 21, began to open up.

"Like when I talk, I used to talk like this and just be talking. And she would like do like this," White said, gesturing at how Studer would force him to look her in the eye.

"I put my head down and I'm like, 'Come up here. Bring your eyes up here,'" she said.

"I'm just going to look at you. 'Cause I would rather look you in your eye than have you looking all up my nose and stuff like this," White said. "So I'm just going give her what she want. And she wouldn't stop for nothing."