Minnesota Department of Corrections officials are investigating after a 22-year-old inmate was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday and died at the scene.

Corrections officers at the Stillwater prison found the man about 3:30 a.m. and attempted life-saving efforts. The man, whose name has not been released, died about 20 minutes later, according to a statement from corrections officials.

While the cause of death was not immediately known, preliminary information indicated the victim may have used synthetic drugs, the statement said.

Foul play was not suspected, the statement continued.

“On behalf of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, I want to extend condolences to the young man’s family,” Commissioner Paul Schnell said. “If this death is determined to be drug-related, we will make every effort to determine who introduced and provided the substance for the purpose of pursuing prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”

Minnesota’s prison system, along with those across the nation, is experiencing challenges related to synthetic controlled substances. Often the drugs are infused into paper that enters facilities through the mail. As a result of Saturday’s incident, Stillwater prison personnel will photocopy all incoming mail except legal mail due to attorney-client privilege, the Department of Corrections said.

The unit where the man died remained on “lockup status” until further notice, the statement said.

A Minneapolis nonprofit serving homeless youth will begin a $700,000 makeover of two of its shelters this summer, capping a multiyear effort that invited shelter residents into the design process.

The Bridge for Youth provides support services and temporary housing for teens and young parents. Its two emergency shelters, Resilience House and Gloria’s Place, share a building at 1111 W. 22nd St. in Minneapolis. The first phase of demolition is underway, and renovations are set to begin in the coming weeks.

Resilience House provides 24-hour shelter, case management, food and health care for youths ages 10-17. Gloria’s Place is the only emergency shelter in Minnesota for pregnant teens and teen parents ages 15-17; it has space for up to six families.

According to the agency, 50% of young people experiencing homelessness in Hennepin County are pregnant or have children.

The building was purchased and first renovated nearly 16 years ago, Executive Director Lisa Mears said. Since then, it has been “feeling fatigued,” she said. This summer’s renovations will include new flooring, paint and furniture.

Another major reason for the renovation was to incorporate design feedback from current and former shelter residents. The designs are aimed to create spaces “where youth can heal and feel safe” from personal traumatic experiences, Mears said.

In 2021, three Dunwoody College students were brought onto the project to craft designs that would inspire the renovations. Carissa Friendshuh, Marco Salazar and Austin Rastall were fifth-year architecture students who spent about a year working on designs. They interviewed shelter residents, did research and toured the facility.

The students worked to make the facility feel more open and comfortable. Their designs were intentional about lighting, colors and having nooks tucked away for privacy within shared spaces.

“You want to be in a space that’s inviting, that feels safe, that feels secure, but also you’re able to get some freedom in it,” Rastall said. That concept was carried throughout the design decisions, he added.

Salazar said working on the project was a “full circle” moment because his sister was a shelter resident several years ago.

The Legislature last year provided $500,000 for the renovations, and the Bridge added $200,000.

The nonprofit this year campaigned unsuccessfully at the Capitol for $3.5 million to add 15 transitional housing units to a current facility, Marlene’s Place, and 24 non-time limited supportive housing units at a new site. Mears said Bridge officials are discussing their next steps.

About the partnership

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.

A self-described loner, Jack Kodell bounced around southern Minnesota as a kid before — presto! — blossoming into a world-renowned magician.

With his first-ever live bird act, Kodell wowed everyone from Queen Elizabeth to Ed Sullivan. He made tiny parakeets appear and vanish from Paris to Las Vegas, where he performed the Strip’s first magic act in the 1940s at just 17.

Only a few people today remember Kodell. One of them is Roger Jennings, 80, a Mankato-born former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and lawyer who lives in Simi Valley, Calif. Jennings learned magic from his ninth-grade algebra teacher, Ronald Hibbard, who started a magic club in the 1950s at Lincoln Junior High School in Mankato.

“All of the seven members knew about Jack Kodell and his success in performing magic around the world,” said Jennings, a member of various magicians’ organizations for nearly 50 years.

Online there is a 5½-minute clip of Kodell’s act, recorded in France in 1958 , when he was nearly 30 and wearing his full-tail tuxedo.

But things weren’t always so glitzy for Kodell — a stage name for John Koudelka, born in Mankato in 1927.

His father sold Firestone tires in southern Minnesota before World War II, moving every year to open new territory. The lifestyle was tough on young Jack, the only child of Ed and Ida Koudelka, a school teacher.

“We lived throughout the state of Minnesota in a different town every year, Mankato, Albert Lea, Austin and some small towns, too,” he wrote in “Kodell: Do Something Different,” his 2011 autobiography.

Making friends proved tricky, he said, because “each town held a different school and different kids … one year really does not cement any solid bonding of lifetime school pal relations.”

Kodell said his parents felt sorry for all the uprooting “and made every effort to make up for it in any way they could.” Or as a 1952 profile put it in Linking Ring, a magic journal: “His folks catered to his every whim.”

That included occasionally driving the family car at age 7 under parental supervision and moving beyond his model airplane hobby to fly real airplanes — logging 79 cockpit hours aloft between ages 8 and 13 (three years before he could get a license).

The turning point for the adventurous kid came in 1941 when Jack won the Soap Box Derby in Minneapolis, prompting a Sunday front-page photo with his trophy and a big grin. He qualified for the international title in Akron, Ohio, but lost in the first heat to a kid from West Virginia.

While in Minneapolis for the derby, Jack stopped at a downtown magic shop and purchased a set of multiplying billiard balls. He mastered the trick “after countless hours and weeks of practice,” studying under a Mankato meat merchant who “dabbled in the ancient art” of magic, according to the 1952 profile. “Under the butcher’s tutelage Kodell soon developed into Mankato’s favorite and busiest young performer.”

Jack moved with his parents to Chicago when he was 16, just as he was developing his parakeet trick. By 17 he was performing in Las Vegas, a town that Kodell said “didn’t want any association with cheating involving cards or coins,” the two staples of magic shows. His bird act changed all that.

Kodell took the stage in several countries, including England where his 1950 marriage in London to popular British singer Mary Naylor landed him on the front page of the tabloids. But after 15 years as a headlining magician, Kodell walked away from magic in 1962 while still in his 30s.

“His type of top-hats-and-tails show, accompanied by a live orchestra, was on the way out, and he was not interested in changing his style,” the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2001.

After Jack and Mary moved to Florida in 1991, opening a dinner show theater and managing a hotel, Kodell said: “Now everyone does a bird act.”

Kodell died at 84 in Orlando in 2012, two years after a Florida theater honored him as a Legend of Magic. “It feels so good to walk out on stage one more time,” he told a magazine writer.

Kodell returned to Minnesota to perform at the State Fair in 1960. Minneapolis Star columnist Cedric Adams wrote that the former Soap Box Derby winner had visited 18 countries in the nearly two decades since leaving Minnesota, and noted that the Kodells had to fork out 50 cents each to get into the fairgrounds and 75 cents to park their car there. “Neither Mary nor her husband can quite get used to having to pay to go to work,” Adams wrote.

Curt Brown’s tales about Minnesota’s history appear every other Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.