Pastoral minister has led prayer services for inmates since 1987

She's an incongruous visitor to the sterile, cement confines of the King County Jail.

At 72, Pat King walks with a bit of a stoop and, as always, on a recent morning, arrived with a bouquet of flowers placed inside an empty yogurt container. No glass or metal can be brought into the jail.

The guards and the inmates greeted King with a smile as she made her way to a 20-by-24-foot meeting room on the third floor.

The room consisted of the usual cement floor; narrow, whited-out windows (so inmates can't wave to friends outside); plastic chairs; a TV bolted near the ceiling; a whiteboard; bright fluorescent overhead lights; and a table with a chunk torn out of its composite top.

This is a place populated with tough-looking inmates wearing red scrubs and slippers, and no-nonsense guards who live and work with the sound of clanging iron doors and surveillance cameras everywhere.

In this harsh environment, what King provides inmates is something that's hard to quantify.

As a pastoral minister for the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, she gives them a bit of hope. Because she is fluent in Spanish, it is Hispanic inmates with whom she mostly visits.

"She's the Mother Teresa of the King County Jail," said Karen Pohio, the jail's community program manager. "She exudes gentleness in a facility that is very much about power and control."

In that bare meeting room, King covered the worn table with a tablecloth, and then set on it her flowers and pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in preparation for the prayer service.

"If I didn't have this service, I'd sit and dwell," said Steve, 46, one of the inmates. "I come here, and the whole day is 100 percent better."

The jail would neither allow use of the inmates' last names, the reasons why they were in jail nor identifiable photographs.

Three times a week, for 20 years, except when she's been ill or on a brief vacation, King has taken the No. 5 bus from her tiny Greenwood home to the downtown jail.

Besides the prayer services, she's made what she estimates as 35,000 individual visits with inmates.

In her self-effacing demeanor, the gray-haired King looks like she walked out of a convent.

In fact, for 14 years after she graduated in 1953 from Holy Names High School here, King was in a convent.

But in 1967, she turned to an unlikely profession for the next chapter in her life.

For the next 21 years, she worked as a parking-enforcement officer for the city of Seattle.

"It's just where I needed to be, around people," she said.

She studied and became fluent in Spanish, and in 1987 was asked by the church if she wanted to help out in the jail with Hispanic inmates.

At last week's prayer service, 20 inmates showed up, nearly all Hispanic, and most having grown up going to the Catholic Church.

One inmate had tattoos showing a cross and hands praying, as well as Jesus with a crown of thorns, blood dripping.

"I believe in Jesus. Coming here makes my mind clear. It makes things less depressing," said Mauricio, 31.

King began the service, "Estamos aqui ... ," then switched to English, "We're here ... ," going back and forth between Spanish and English.

She prayed for inmates' family members, and for the inmates themselves. She brought out a small boombox, on which she played hymns previously recorded by inmates, and encouraged current ones to sing along. She gave out tambourines and maracas.

She warned them to better use the musical instruments or she'd take them away. The inmates obeyed, one saying that Pat King really meant it.

On her individual visits with inmates, King said, she always begins with, "What's going on with you?"

For many, that's all it takes for them to tell their stories.

"Maybe their mother has died, or it's their daughter's birthday and they wish they were there," she said. "Sometimes they want to talk about their case. Almost always, we pray the rosary."

It's mostly male inmates whom she sees, as there are many more Hispanic males than females in the jail. King said she's never felt in danger with the inmates.

"Look at this place, all the concrete. This is a dreary place," she said. "There's nothing pretty, there's nothing beautiful to look at, except people's faces."

She told about their reaction to her flowers.

On her visit last week, King's bouquet came from the garden at her home, the season's last bunch of dahlias, marigolds, cosmos and other flowers. When winter really sets in, she said, she'll buy primroses at a Fred Meyer.

Once, she said, she thought about not bringing them anymore.

But, right after that, King said, she was visiting with an inmate who saw the bouquet and couldn't stop smelling it. The jail offers no such glimpses of life outside.

"He said, 'I look at these flowers and I ask myself, 'Why do anything bad?' " King said.

She's never stopped bringing flowers.