Video by Sydney Croasmun

Betty Peters, a retiree who lives in Castaic, said she was called by the Lord to help.

The Santa Clarita Valley heat was also a source of inspiration.

As the temperatures climbed into the triple digits over the weekend, Peters recalled when she received her current calling five years ago.

“I saw a gal walking outside, and it was about 110 degrees,” she said, when she founded her mobile ministry at the bus stop near Commerce Center Drive and Hasley Canyon Road.

She found the woman walking near the bus stop, and after asking her where she was headed, offered to give her a ride.

Peters, a longtime Santa Clarita Valley resident, knew the woman’s destination, Pitchess Detention Center, was a little more than a mile up the road.

“Which isn’t a bad deal for someone young and physically able,” she said. There’s a bit of a steep slope to climb for someone who is physically disabled, she said, and avoiding the slope adds a bit of distance to the trek.

“If you decide to do the loop around, it adds about another 15 minutes, and there’s no walking path,” Peters said. “And if they’re pushing a baby cart, then they have to stay in the street where cars are whizzing by there.”

Peters began to chat with the woman and knew there was a way she could help. She started to follow the buses, to and from the jail, giving those visiting their relatives in Pitchess a way to ease the gap between public transportation and the jail’s walls.

The site was a familiar fixture for the longtime resident, although she’d never run afoul of the law. She retired after four decades of employment at Borax, leaving as spokeswoman for the brand. She moved from Stevenson Ranch to Castaic, and her new home came with a view that included the facility, which is surrounded by thousands of acres of open space and a fire camp.

“I open my curtain every day, and I look at the jail,” she said of the 2,620-acre facility formerly known as the Wayside Honor Rancho. “I started praying for them. I feel that the Lord is the only one who can get ‘my boys’ on the path. I call them my boys when I’m praying for them.”

She was nervous to tell her husband about her hitchhikers, after the first time she gave them a ride, because, he generally errs on the side of caution.

Peters counsels and consoles her boys’ loved ones on the 1.2-mile ride from the bus stop near the Hasley Canyon Road roundabout and the detention center on the weekends, talking with the loved ones of those in trouble.

Peters’ interest became more than passing, and she became involved in the prison ministry with a friend and former PDC chaplain.

She makes the trip eight times a day on Saturday and Sunday, and has for the last five years, letting the women visiting their husbands know there’s someone who cares for them, she said.

“I let them know, ‘I’m lending them to you,’” Peters said with a laugh, “‘And because they’re mine, you’re mine, too.’ And they laugh because their husband is in jail, and here’s somebody who really wants them.”

The “gallows humor” is her attempt to make things as pleasant as possible for the women in her car who are usually stressed by the stark reality of their destination, she said.

She’ll chide them to tell the women they have to buy their man a shirt the same color as the one they wear in the jail yard when they get out, and their man it’s because they like the color — then they share a laugh about the inevitable rebuke from their boyfriend or husband at the suggestion of a neon yellow shirt as a coming-home gift.

She jokes with them, but she also prays with them and for them, she said, and they return her prayers with in kind and with gratitude in moments that can become emotional for Peters and her passengers.

But “Mama Betty,” as she’s affectionately known, does what she can to let her riders know someone cares about them and their significant other behind bars. She offers all of her guests a devotional book called “Daily Bread,” and encourages them to help their loved one “find a place for accountability.”

She offers advice for how the woman can prepare for when their husbands are back on the outside, and how they can help them re-adjust, offering encouraging words.

After five years of showing up every weekend, the buses and their passengers now await Peters, and the bus will even flash its lights to indicate to her when the bus has a passenger headed to Pitchess.

“It’s become a very big part of my life,” she said. “I care very much about the girls and the guys.”

Peters’ goal is a simple, but inspired one:

“To reach the hearts of the girls and their husbands to get them on the right path,” Peters said, “so they will not end up there again.”