MCALESTER, Okla. — From across the arena, Jeri Hekia and her 8-year-old grandson, Micah Craig, called out to Hekia's husband as he prepared for the rodeo.

"I love you, baby!" Hekia shouted across the bleachers while her grandson jumped up and down next to her waving a brown cardboard sign, which read, "I love you, papa, Good luck."

The exchange was the extent of their communication with Kevin Hekia, who waved his white cowboy hat at them from an area enclosed by razor wire and tall metal gates.

Hekia was one of 143 prison inmates from across Oklahoma who had traveled to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester to participate in one of the nation's longest-running prison rodeos.

Were they not spending this hot, dusty Friday evening at the rodeo, Hekia and his 12 teammates would be sitting in prison cells at the Jess Dunn Correctional Facility in Taft, serving sentences for rape, murder, assault and numerous drug offenses. Hekia is serving 10 years on drug charges.

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Billed as the world's largest behind-the-walls rodeo, the Oklahoma State Prison Rodeo has been a local tradition in McAlester for 67 years. Corrections employees and town residents often reflect on their earliest memories of the rodeo, along with other events tied to the prison, including several inmate escapes and a 1973 riot that left the facility in ruins, as benchmarks in their lives.

The event is also a financial boon for the 18,000-person town of McAlester, which sees its hotels fill to capacity the weekend of the rodeo. Most of the rodeo's 10,000 attendees travel from across Oklahoma and beyond to watch convicted murderers and drug offenders take their own lives in their hands against wild bulls and broncos.

Professional cowboys also lend their expertise to events like calf roping and steer wrestling, displays that are interspersed among the inmate competitions to fill time and add an air of grace to the otherwise gladiator-like ambience.

Prison officials aren't afraid to admit that this rodeo "gets pretty wild," especially those events spectators won't see in professional rodeos.

Micah Craig, 8, came to see his grandfather for the first time in three years.

One, called "Money the Hard Way," pits inmates against a bull with a ribbon tied between its horns. The person who wrestles the ribbon from the bull's horns wins $100. In "Bull Poker," inmates sit around a plastic table while a bull charges them. The last person left sitting at the table wins.

The events have earned the rodeo a reputation for being one of the most unusual and brutal shows of its kind, even for a regular rodeo fan.

"You have events here that you won't see anywhere else," said Marilyn Jernigan, one of 4,000 attendees filling the arena Friday night. She and her husband, Douglas, traveled across the state from Yukon. "And with them being hardened criminals, that should make things a little more interesting."

"These guys are really out to win," added Jernigan's friend, Thelma McDowell, who said she was looking forward to the bull-riding event.

Others, like Jeri Hekia, made the long trek mostly to catch a glimpse of their confined family or friends outside the prison visiting center.

Hekia traveled three hours from Chickasaw, Okla., to watch her husband participate in bareback riding, one of seven events that test the inmates' mettle on bulls and broncos and against each other to compete for cash prizes and belt buckles, but most of all, glory.

Kevin Hekia's team from Jess Dunn — a facility named after the warden who founded the rodeo, only to be killed by inmates a few weeks before its debut in 1940 — were defending their champion title against inmates from 11 prisons, including two facilities for women.

"It makes me nervous, but he's crazy and I love him for it," Jeri Hekia, a self-described rodeo fanatic, said of her husband's participation in the event.

"And he loves to see his pawpaw ride," Hekia said, pointing to her skinny, grinning grandson. "He wants to be a cowboy when he grows up."

The event attracts 10,000 visitors over two nights.

The event seemed especially exciting for the quiet boy, who last saw his grandfather more than three years ago, before he went to prison for manufacturing methamphetamines.

Jeri Hekia served eight months stemming from the same drug operation. She said the memory of her grandson crying as she was led from a courtroom in handcuffs inspired her and her husband to turn their lives around.

Being on his best behavior in prison not only increases Kevin Hekia's chance of being paroled next year, but also helped him grab a position on the rodeo team.