Podcast: Ida McCray

The founder of Families with a Future, an organization that supports children of incarcerated mothers, and a decades-long Employee at the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, Ida McCray has a life story that will make your jaw drop. Spoiler: It includes hijacking a plane.

Ida McCray, photographed by Michelle Kilfeather

Welcome to our monthly podcast, produced in Partnership with Storied: San Francisco and hosted by Jeff Hunt.

Ida McCray has left San Francisco. The founder of Families with a Future, an organization devoted to providing support for the children of incarcerated mothers, and a decades-long rehabilitation specialist at the San Francisco Sheriff's Department Women's Resource Center, has a life story that will make your jaw drop. Spoiler: It includes hijacking a plane.

In this podcast, Ida, who was born and raised in The City, takes us back to around the time of her birth. Her dad was in and out of trouble and her mom put Ida in Catholic school. An only child, she loved books but school never excited her. She got into her own trouble as a teenager, and found herself in and out of Juvenile Hall.

After graduating high school at 16, Ida got involved in political activism and converted to Islam. This came after roughly a year and a half of her life locked up on a petty theft charge.

In Part 2, Ida picks up where she left off in Part 1, with her release from prison when she was a teenager. She shares the infamous story of when she helped hijacked a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles and ended up in Cuba.