NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Reggie Williams makes a living cutting hair in a north Nashville barber shop. But at his other job as a youth minister, it’s a different type of debt he feels he’s paying off by sharing his story of a second chance.

Related: Watch This Story

"I almost didn’t return. I’m not talking about to the streets; I’m talking about to life," Williams said.

Williams grew up in one Settle Court. At the time, it was considered one of Nashville’s roughest housing projects. At age 10, he began shoplifting and stealing cars. By the time he was a teen, he’d become a dangerous criminal.

“We'd rob them. The getaway was easy, we felt,” he said.

In late 1996, Williams robbed more than a dozen fast food restaurants in Nashville. For months, he and his partner were able to get away.

On Sept. 26, 1996, Williams cased out a Texaco Market on Spence Lane.

“It seemed like to a criminal, the perfect store. It was no cars around. It seemed like a ghost town,” he said.

But Metro police had been piecing together the puzzle and had him under full surveillance. That night, police watched as he entered the Texaco market.

Just as Williams pulled his gun on the cashier, a Metro police officer fired at him from outside the store. Williams was hit in the back.

The next day, he and his partner were booked into jail. A few months later, the 19-year-old was sentenced to 30 years in prison for 14 counts of aggravated robbery.

Williams said the experience was “the worst weekend of my life, but it turned out to be the best move I ever made.”

While in prison, Williams said he began to reflect on his life and soul-search. During that process, his mother died. Soon, he said, a light went on.

“It all flooded to me, you've got to change now. You don’t have tomorrow,” he said.

At Nashville’s Riverbend Prison, he began taking divinity classes through Union University and Vanderbilt University. Williams said that experience showed him that true rehabilitation required help from a power greater than himself.

He also found yoga as way to turn frustration into positive energy.

“I felt like I was going to die to live, so I applied myself wholly. I wanted to see a difference,” he said.

In 2007, after serving 11 years behind bars, Williams was granted parole and released.

He said he was determined not to go back to the streets, so he began working full-time as a barber. He also decided to use what he learned in prison to become a licensed youth minister.

“If you don’t think it's real, keep playing with your life. If you don’t think it's real, it's real. Prison is real. Death is real,” he told a group of teens in Nashville’s Hadley Park community center.

Now at age 32, he shares his story with groups of youngsters across Nashville. Williams said it’s a way for him to give back to a community from which he once used to take.