Vanee Sykes was at a crossroads in 2014. She was 47, and she had just been released from a federal prison after serving a term for her involvement in a scheme to steal food stamps.

During her time in prison, her husband of 20 years, James Sykes, a social worker, died of an unexpected illness. Her three children were making the transition from childhood to adolescence without a parent.

But Vanee Sykes was thankful for a family to go home to. Many of her fellow prisoners, she knew, had to face the stark challenges of reentry on their own. She decided to help.

She and Topeka Sam, a friend she had met in jail, received a gift from a generous donor to open a halfway house in the Bronx for single women who were newly released. They called it Hope House, and it had space for five women.

That experience, coupled with her personal history, dynamic optimism and determination to help others, served Sykes as credentials for a new career helping women who had served time behind bars.

She died May 24 at a hospital in Oceanside, New York, on Long Island. She was 53. Family members said the cause was COVID-19.

Sykes was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 17, 1967, to Aron Abrams, a dental technician, and Ethel Abrams, a schoolteacher. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the American College of Applied Arts in Atlanta, where she studied marketing and fashion.

After graduation she found a job at New York City’s Department of Human Resources, which administers many anti-poverty programs.

In 2010, federal authorities accused her of running an operation involving three confederates that converted food stamps to cash, reaping $8 million, while she was an administrator at the agency. Sykes pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to 63 months in prison and ordered to pay $6.6 million in restitution; court officials said she had repaid $6,530,980.

Sykes remained involved in the lives of her children from inside the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, speaking to all three of them daily, her mother said.

In addition to her mother, Sykes is survived by two sons, Jeffrey, who is in the real estate business, and James IV, a teacher working with special-needs children; and a daughter, Alexis, who won a basketball scholarship to the University of South Alabama before transferring to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

After her experience with Hope House, Sykes was hired as the director of outreach for Witness to Mass Incarceration, a prison reform organization.

Part of her job was working on the Suitcase Project, which provides women and gay and transgender people newly released from jail with a suitcase of essentials: clothing, shoes, a cellphone with a year’s service, hygiene and beauty products, a laptop.

When she died, Sykes was working with others on plans to create a halfway house, big enough for a dozen women, in Brooklyn.

Evie Litwok, who founded the Witness to Mass Incarceration project, estimated that Sykes had helped 100 former prisoners find lodging and support.

Michelle Miles, a former inmate mentored by Sykes, remembered her with emotion: “When she came into your presence, you felt her compassion.”