But Smith, Inmate No. 89426-020, and Thomas, Inmate No. 89378-020, have no choice but to settle for their room-temperature seats in front of a community TV inside the low-security Federal Correctional Institution that houses them. They will watch the Denver Broncos play the Seattle Seahawks with dozens of fellow female inmates, many of them wearing T-shirts carrying Demaryius' number, 88, and some wearing his number and initials on their cheeks.
"It will be a bittersweet situation," Smith said Monday night. "Sweet that my son made it to this point, and bitter that I'm not there to celebrate this time in his life."
They are convicted drug traffickers, Katina and Minnie Pearl, and you'd never know it by talking to them and measuring their yes-sir, no-sir approach for close to an hour. Some 15 years after the cops stormed their Georgia home and busted their crack cocaine operation while 11-year-old Demaryius lay terrified in his bed, Katina and Minnie Pearl serve as mentors and role models among the 1,116 women incarcerated in the FCI. According to Edith Barefoot, the facility's public information officer, Demaryius' mother and grandmother are so respectful of staff and so committed to their jobs and classes, and to the betterment of younger inmates, that they've been granted preferred housing as a reward.
