David Potchen, 53, who robbed a bank in Merrillville, Indiana, last June, now has a job as a welder and is staying out of trouble after receiving help from family members that had long been estranged.

He had told a Lake County judge earlier this year that he attempted to rob a local Chase bank so that he could get placed back in custody, where he had served 12 and a half years in prison.

Potchen, who was originally sentenced for a 2000 bank robbery, had been making $8.29 an hour in prison but had trouble finding a job on his release.

He  was on probation in June and served 286 more days before he told Judge Clarence Murray that he would plead guilty only if he got the maximum eight years for the recent theft and was put back in prison.

"In my lifetime I have had occasion to run into a lot of homeless people, but I don't recall ever meeting face-to-face a hopeless person. To me, someone who would give up on freedom, it was just shocking," Murray said.

Potchen had decided he needed to go back to prison after his years free had left him without a job or a place to stay and sleeping in mosquito-filled woods.

After stealing roughly $1,000 with a bank robbery note on the back of his resume, he sat on the curb outside and waited for police.

The judge decided to let Potchen withdraw his plea and give the 53-year-old a conversion charge that will drop the robbery charge if he stays out of trouble for one year.

"You’re not a throwaway, Mr. Potchen. You have value, sir. I’m always optimistic and hopeful that there are still good people out there who believe freedom is important," Murray said in February. 

Murray appealed to those who heard about the case to offer the defendant help. 

Now the reformed man has reconnected with cousins who have bought him a microwave, clothes and a coffee maker to help him adjust to life on the outside and continue working welding truck flat beds in Illinois.

"I can't stop them. They keep buying me things," he said.

The owner of the trucking company, a devout Christian, has hired ex-convicts before and felt like he needed to do something to help Potchen.

He said he was 'all about the job'.