More than half the women in California prisons are mothers. Some go months or even years without seeing their children. But with a bus service dubbed the Chowchilla Family Express, Eric DeBode ’88 is trying to change that.

With dawn still an hour away, the bus speeds south through the Central Valley. A DVD of a cartoon plays on a television monitor, but few of the dozens of passengers aboard are watching. Instead they pensively sip coffee, or they sleep, draped in blankets and scrunched into seats.

Their bus left Sacramento at 4 a.m., pausing several times to pick up riders in towns along Highway 99: Stockton, Manteca, Modesto. Two other buses departed even earlier—one took off from south Los Angeles at 3 a.m., another left Redding just after midnight. Destination for all three buses: a prison complex in Chowchilla that houses more than 8,000 women, the nation’s largest concentration of female prisoners. Waiting there are the mothers and sisters, wives and daughters of the bus riders. For some, it’s been years since they’ve seen one another.

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