We are all products of our mistakes, and this moving story offers one profound example:

It was 21 years ago when Glenn Wise was shot in the head during an attempted armed robbery. He has been a quadriplegic ever since, and the 48-year-old has spent the past two decades in Cook County’s Oak Forest Hospital.

But before you get all dewy-eyed, you ought to know this: Wise was the stickup man, not the holdup victim.

“I had a drinking and drug problem,” Wise will tell anyone who stops by his room. “I was using cocaine and needed money. So I heard about this businessman who deposited his receipts at a bank at a certain time of day and thought it would be a good idea to rob him.

“I used a plastic cap pistol,” Wise said with a laugh. “Not the brightest guy.”

He really doesn’t remember anything after that but was told a police officer driving by in a squad car saw him, stopped and shot him in the head at point-blank range.

“That probably saved my life because the bullet didn’t gain enough velocity to go all the way through,” Wise said. “It’s still in my head.”

He was in a coma for a month and woke up in Illinois Masonic Hospital. He later was transferred to Oak Forest for long-term care before he was even brought to trial.

“The sentence was three years, but I guess you could say it was a life sentence,” Wise said, tapping his motorized wheelchair.

He has made numerous speeches to schoolchildren and young criminals who were instructed by a judge to hear his words.

“I tell them all the same thing,” Wise said. “Don’t be stupid. If you do drugs, if you have a drinking problem, this is how you can end up. I know most of them aren’t going to listen. But I figure if I can reach even one person in those speeches, if I can save one life, it will be worth it.”

There were more than 200 long-term patients at Oak Forest two years ago when Cook County decided to shut the unit down. An independent contractor was hired to help patients find nursing homes to live in.

Wise didn’t want to leave. Oak Forest has become his home. He participated in a protest rally with some of the other residents, which didn’t do much good.

Then he heard from someone that if he refused to leave, if he didn’t voluntarily choose a nursing home, the county would be legally required to keep him at the hospital.

“I was told they couldn’t just put me out on the street, so I chose to stay and see what would happen,” Wise said.

Two years later, he and a few other long-term patients remain.

He goes to church at a Catholic chapel on the hospital grounds every Sunday. As far as he’s concerned, that’s one of the primary assets of Oak Forest Hospital.

“I used to stay in my room and watch the Mass on TV each Sunday, and then one day someone with the church came by and said, ‘You’ve got to get out of your room and experience the service for yourself,’ ” Wise said. “That’s really when my life began to change.”

He takes communion every day.

Continue at the link for more about his remarkable journey.