The San Quentin Nurse Showing America That She’s Got Talent

Oakland singer Dee Dee Simon’s story is an example of divine timing.

She’s impressing judges in Hollywood and healing people in prison, all while following God’s plan, she says. After years of sitting on her vocal gifts, she’s finally letting her light shine, showing the world her talent and reaping the rewards. Plus, she’s keeping her day job.

On the heels of winning last November’s Amateur Night at The Apollo — earning a $20,000 check and joining a winner’s circle that spans Ella Fitzgerald to H.E.R. — Dee Dee Simon was contacted by America’s Got Talent.

After singing for the judging panel of Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Sofia Vergara and Howie Mandel, the singer says, “they all gave me a standing ovation and pushed me forward to go and be in the live show.”

On stage, Simon showed and proved throughout the competition, and her amazing performance of Teddy Swim’s “Lose Control” garnered thunderous applause from the studio audience. The four judges were moved as well, and Heidi Klum rang the show’s golden buzzer, automatically propelling Simon to the competition’s final round, which airs on Tuesday, Sept. 17.

Simon says that initially, it was her voice that impressed the judges. But when they found out about her day job, they were floored.

“It became more intriguing to them that I work here,” says Simon during a recent phone call from San Quentin, at work as she talked. “Because I’ve been a death row nurse for 10 years.”

Simon has worked at San Quentin for 19 years total. Around the time she got hired, a coworker learned about her vocal abilities and asked her to sing on the prison yard during a “Peace Day” event.

“I didn’t really notice the politics at the time,” says Simon, discussing the makeup of the groups sitting together on the yard during the event. Nonetheless, she took to the stage and grabbed the microphone. “I started singing ‘Killing Me Softly,'” Simon says, referring to The Fugees 1996 remake of the classic Roberta Flack record.

By the time Simon got to the second verse, the different groups in the audience had started fighting each other. As the incident escalated, she quickly pivoted from vocalist to trained nurse: “I had to step off the stage and triage patients.”

Simon never sang at the prison again — until earlier this year, just after winning Amateur Night at The Apollo. This time, her performance was met with a much calmer response.

In the past two decades, Simon has seen the prison go through significant transitions.

In 2006, just after she was hired, the healthcare situation was so dire inside the State of California’s overcrowded prison system that it was placed under federal receivership. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic posed an even more urgent threat to residents of the state’s prisons, especially at San Quentin.

“It was scary,” says Simon, recalling the pandemic. In addition to overcrowding, the prison faced a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare providers. Plus, incarcerated people were being transferred to San Quentin from other institutions. “These guys showed up with COVID,” says Simon, “and when they got here, it went bonkers.”

In May of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that, due to a botched transfer of people from the California Institution for Men in Chino to San Quentin in 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation could potentially be held responsible for the deaths of 29 people, including one officer.

Looking to usher in a new era at the institution, Gov. Newsom last year announced San Quentin’s new name, the “San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.” Simon says the changes are subtle, if even noticeable at all. She mostly works with the same people. The one major difference is that the former death row inmates are now lifers.

“Trying to integrate them into the general population can be tricky. They’ve been by themselves in another unit,” says Simon. “But I still see them. As far as patients, I just work with the general population more now.”

Before becoming a clinical nurse and working with hundreds of men behind bars, Simon was a licensed social worker. The common thread between her work and her passion for singing, Simon says, is the ability to heal.

As a kid in East Oakland, Simon learned to sing using her hairbrush as a microphone in her bedroom, and by performing at her mom’s house parties. She eventually found a choir at Mills Grove Christian Church in East Oakland, where she honed her craft. A singer as well as a writer, Simon says music is her form of self-care. “I have to sing,” says Simon. “That’s mandatory, or I’ll die.”

Now that she’s sharing her vocals with the world, Simon is living.

After one of her episodes of America’s Got Talent aired earlier this summer, she went to work the next day and was met with a round of applause from the incarcerated men as she entered the housing unit. Coworkers visited her office, asking for photos. “I have people from outside,” Simon says, “who I don’t know, calling San Quentin to say, ‘Is Dee Dee Simon there?’”

On the cusp of the America’s Got Talent season finale — the biggest evening of her career — Simon is grateful for the support from people at San Quentin, as well as everyone who has helped and prayed for her. If she wins (finale results air on Sept. 24), she wants to uplift the work of the Alzheimers Association. She also wants to be an example to other artists, specifically little Black girls coming up.

“I want them to know that they don’t have to do something against their morals to make it,” says Simon. “Everything will happen on their own time.”

The final round of Season 19 of America’s Got Talent airs on Tuesday, Sept. 17; final results will be aired on Tuesday, Sept. 24. More information here.