Why did Judge Linda Teodosio fire a model detention officer?

But when Asbury complained to Guthrie's superiors, she was written up for disrespecting the chain of command. Teodosio never investigated her claims.

The randomness of the rules made it difficult to focus on the real task at hand — saving kids. "You were constantly worried that whenever you were helping a kid out, you might be doing something that could get you written up, because you just didn't know what the policies were," Asbury says.

So she would learn her lessons the hard way.

In 2005, 17-year-old Tyresa Gissendaner walked through the doors of Dan Street. Though she came from the blighted Manchester-Thornton area of Akron, Gissendaner managed to stay out of trouble for most of her life. "People always said I was the nicest bad kid they ever met," she says.

Gissendaner, who delivers her sass through a big, bright smile, ran track, loved school, and worked at the Boys & Girls Club. But she was attracted to troublemakers.

For years she'd been dating Richard, a guy from the neighborhood who ran with the V-Not gang. "We looked good together," Gissendaner says. "People wanted to be us. We was like the popular couple."

They were also a violent couple. Richard repeatedly hit Gissendaner, beating her unconscious, fracturing her nose, and knocking her teeth out. Gissendaner refused to press charges. "That's just not how we do things where I'm from," she says. "My mom told me to handle it."

So Gissendaner did. After a long night of partying, the two got into a spat. Richard choked her until she was unconscious. When she came to, she grabbed a knife and stabbed him. "His eyes just got real wide," she says. "And he said he couldn't breathe. It killed me when I realized what I did."

As they waited for an ambulance, Gissendaner applied pressure to the wound. Each time Richard tried to hug her, more blood would gush out. "I love you," he told her.

Richard refused to say who stabbed him. When he got to the hospital, he slipped into a coma for two months. By the time he awoke, he was blind and paralyzed, due to a lack of oxygen.

Detectives knew that Gissendaner and Richard had been fighting. When they questioned her, she spilled everything.

Gissendaner knew a lot of the girls in detention — familiar faces from the broken homes that littered her neighborhood. Everyone warned her to stay away from Asbury. "They kept saying how tough she was," Gissendaner says.

But she took an immediate liking to the detention officer. Once, when Gissendaner was rushed to the hospital for medical complications she'd rather not reveal, Miss A was the one who sat beside her during her recovery. "She was always there for me after that," Gissendaner says. "She was always at my side, and she didn't even know me."

Gissendaner says that Asbury always told it to her straight. "She wasn't like the other [officers] who just didn't care."

It was Asbury who told her that the stabbing charges had been bumped up to attempted murder. At first, Gissendaner was in denial, convinced that she'd be walking out of Dan Street in a matter of days. "It was Miss A who set me straight. She was the one who got me the lawyer, tried to help me get the proper representation."

Gissendaner's mother couldn't afford an attorney, so the case was left to a public defender, whose main priority was juggling a monstrous caseload. Asbury wasn't pleased by the minimal face time the lawyer was providing her young client, so she encouraged Gissendaner to lodge numerous complaints with the public defender's office.

It was no use. The lawyer told Gissendaner to take a five-year plea.

A year later, Asbury was written up for giving another inmate similar legal advice. "Again, there is no policy that says we can't give the girls advice," Asbury says. "But that's the way it is."

The best she could do was to mentally prepare Gissendaner for the world of prison. "She told me what it was all about," the girl says. "She reminded me that no matter how bad I had it, someone always had it worse."

Just a week after Gissendaner was sent to Marysville, Asbury was sending letters and care packages. She visited at least once a month, often dragging Gissendaner's mother along. "She just made me feel so good," says Gissendaner, who is completing her diploma and hopes to someday have a job like Asbury's. "She reminded me that I could be an inspiration. I love her so much."