On Saturday I said my first hello and last goodbye to a dying man.
His name is Glen Robert Hoffman, and for most of his adult life, he has generated about as much sympathy as he granted: which is to say, hardly any at all.
Six feet tall and 350 pounds, the drug dealer who could bench press 405 pounds “just like gravy” found little need for mercy. Certainly not on a June night in 2004 when, on a two-day methamphetamine binge, he beat the mother of his child so badly he damaged her pancreas.
The assault landed him in state prison. Bone cancer has led him to his last stop, a bed in a concrete-floored room in the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility’s infirmary.
He is 25 and won’t make 26.
“I’m fading in and out,” he told me. “My one wish is to die knowing that I had my family around me. I can’t even walk. It’s a horrible feeling.”
An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. His breath fogged the plastic, and his ragged voice sounded yards away.
Hoffman slipped off his mask and wheezed. “Our time is the punishment, and anything above that is just cruel.”
He is trying to make what peace he can. It has been a hard run. What began as a nagging ache last winter finally led to an MRI in May. Chemotherapy began in June.
In December, surgeons at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center removed a 35-pound tumor from his left leg. It was the size of a volleyball and had eaten away his femur.
The doctors thought they got all the cancer. They did not. The cancer is in his heart and, they suspect, brain. Hoffman’s life is down to hours.
“Yes, he made mistakes, and he was paying for them,” said his mom, Nancy Hoffman. “But when the judge gave him that sentence, we didn’t expect it to be a life sentence.
“We expected him to come out and make amends.”
She was crying.
Hoffman grew up in Windsor. The kid called Chunk was bipolar and had attention-deficit disorder.
By adulthood, his mom said, a dope-dealing older brother had taught him an economics lesson: He could make more money selling pot than slinging burgers at Dairy Queen.
He took to the work.
In a half-dozen years, Hoffman built a thuggish criminal record. In April 2005 he was sentenced to 21 years for beating Lanna Mae Bullock.
Now his family seeks an act of mercy for the son who performed an unmerciful act. They want him home. The state has refused an early release or medical clemency.
“He did not want to die in prison,” his mom said. “We had it set up where he could go to a hospice, but the Department of Corrections said no.”
Alison Morgan, associate director of prison operations, said prison policy is bound by statutes governing violent criminals. So Hoffman will die behind bars.
His parents, Rick and Nancy, have put their lives on hold to tend their son. Visiting hours are 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
I could not reach Lanna Mae Bullock, but Hoffman’s mom said she has no interest in a goodbye. Nor does Bullock want to bring her 5-year-old son to see his dad. Her decision is understandable.
There is the law of street muscle, which Hoffman could flex at will. There is the law of the state, which is inflexible.
And there is the law of a parent’s heart, which beats within a man and woman whose boy lived outside the law.
If there is mercy within justice, can we be deaf to it?
I have no good answer.
William Porter’s column runs twice a week. Reach him at 303-954-1977 or wporter@denverpost.com.
