They could have been Bonnie and Clyde. A striking, well-dressed woman accompanied by a neatly-dressed man entered a small bank in the South and walked up to the lone teller. At first glance, the bank teller noticed only the flaming red hair. Then he saw the shotgun in his face.

"Just give me the money, Hon," the attractive redhead drawled, and the teller handed it over. This "Bonnie" was Mary Kay Mahaffey: bank robber and safecracker. Her photo hung in post offices, on the FBI’s "Most Wanted" list.

Mary Kay was on the run for the next five years. First she was evading the police with her husband, Paul, who taught her everything she needed to know about guns, safes, and bank alarms. A couple of years into their life of crime, Paul ditched her and she teamed up with a couple of buddies to pull bank stickups and other thefts across the southern part of the United States. Eventually, the FBI caught up with her, and she was arrested in Peoria, Illinois.

Within a few days, the warrants began arriving at the jail. In addition to 11 federal indictments, four different states filed 35 charges against her, ranging from grand larceny to armed robbery. She was told she could spend between 75 and 180 years behind bars.

But she didn’t. Released after serving fewer than six years, she married ex-prisoner Don Beard and went on to start a program that has touched the lives of more than six million children of prisoners over the next 25 years. How did she do it? How did Mary Kay go from America’s Most Wanted to the founder of Angel Tree?

Mary Kay recalled, “In my sixth year at a halfway home, an officer appeared at the door with my release papers. It was a miracle. Even the parole board isn't real sure how it all happened. I never met with the parole board, yet this officer was standing there asking me to sign my release papers. To this day I believe my papers must have gotten mixed up with someone else’s.”

Unexpectedly released in April 1982 with no place to go and no money, she called Chuck Colson, who had touched her prison life through his Prison Fellowship (PF). He gave her a job, which she eventually parlayed to becoming the state director for the Alabama PF.

One of her first tasks was to come up with a Christmas project. She remembered the six Christmases she had spent behind bars. “Some Christian groups would come to the prison and they would bring little trial-size tubes of toothpaste, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo. I saw the women bring the items back to their cells, organize the stuff, and trade with each other. Then they would divide up the items into small piles. I realized that each pile was for one of their children. They would gather bits of colored paper and wrap those items to give to their children as Christmas gifts. It was all they had. And I thought, just because she’s a thief or a drug addict, or possibly even a murderer, doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her children.

The week before Christmas, the children would come to the prison for their annual visit with their mothers, and they would receive these little gifts. The children would tear the wrapping off and barely glance at the gift but they would throw their arms around their mothers and say, ‘Oh, Momma, thank you, thank you.’ You see, children don’t care about things if they know they are first of all loved.”

That Christmas, Mary Kay went back to the same prison where she had spent six years and gathered the names and addresses of the inmates’ children. Then she, her sister, and a handful of volunteers put up Christmas trees at two malls, one in Montgomery, Alabama and the other in Birmingham.

We made paper angels—red for girls and green for boys—and on each angel we wrote the name and age of a child and what they would like. The gifts were to come wrapped from their incarcerated parent. Then we put these paper angels on the tree . . . an Angel Tree! That’s how we got the name. I had no idea what God would do with that project. But within six days we were out of names, and I had to go back to the prison to get more. At the end of that first Angel Tree project in 1982, 556 children had received up to four different gifts each,” Mary Kay shared.

Then Mary Kay saw something else happen. “In January, all of my Bible study groups at that prison doubled or tripled. The newcomers were the inmates whose children had received gifts. They said, ‘Anyone who would get my child gifts from me for Christmas is something special, so I decided to come and listen to this Bible study.’”

She also saw other results, like the reuniting of family ties as children who had not heard from Dad or Mom for a while received gifts from them. “Angel Tree was not my project; it wasn’t even my idea. It was God’s idea. He just allowed me to be the instrument that He used to plant the seed.”

The following year, her program branched out to 12 states and soon developed into a nationwide church-based program. Since Mary Kay first thought about those little tubes of toothpaste while she was in prison, Angel Tree has exploded. In 2004, more than 550,000 children received gifts from generous volunteers, bringing the cumulative total to more than 6.5 million children touched by angels.

Angel Tree continues to “branch” out in new directions as well. In 2003, they started Christian summer camps that a growing number of Angel Tree children can attend, structured just for them and their special needs. And in 2004, churches began opening to provide a quiet environment where Angel Tree children can do their homework. Mentoring programs give these children adult guidance from church members who care and volunteer their time.

When the now silver-haired Mary Kay Beard visits women in prison, she connects with them in a way that few can. She’s one of their own and she cares for their kids. They also see that a woman in their position can still change the world. When she sees how Angel Tree has flourished in just 25 years, Mary Kay smiles. “I am both awed and humbled to have been part of something so enormously effective. Being there at the beginning—I consider it one of the highest privileges of my life.”