TUCKED away behind a panel Liam Knights discovered the note he had penned to himself.

Situated in the library at Leeds University, which he helped to build while working as a labourer, Liam knew instinctively where to look as the years he thought would have passed hadn't. He had secured a place to study there - that was one of his greatest achievements - and discovering the note again had been many years earlier than he had ever anticipated.

Glancing at the words 'Liam Knights, you have only gone and done it' would have no doubt prompted a pinch or two!

That was then, this is now and Liam has almost completed his first year of university, an achievement he shares with many more students.

But Liam's circumstances as to how he arrived where he is today, and the irony of the criminology degree he will undertake next year after completing his foundation year in social science, to eventually work in prison reform are in complete contrast to his educational counterparts.

Listening to him talking so positively about this chapter in his life, it is hard to comprehend this is the same lad who had earlier in our interview been recalling a life so very very different from the law-abiding one he leads today.

After leaving home at 16 Liam stayed between friends and squatting, but to end up as a criminal on the run after taking his chance and stealing more than £20,000 from a bingo hall in his home town of Keighley it sounds more fiction than fact.

If only it had been - but the stark reality was Liam did do wrong, something he acknowledges, but he is hoping to put what he did right by making a difference to other people's lives.

The Justgiving page he has set up aims to fund his trip to Ghana in the summer where he will spend 12 weeks working with children living in poverty through the Government funded project ICS.

Liam's introduction to the life he is living now came through Inn Churches, based in Bradford, an organisation which gave him a chance after he left prison where he paid time for his crime.

It was through Inn Churches he met the man who would secure him work helping to build the library at Leeds University where he is studying. Ironic isn't it?

Sitting in the library, Liam recalls a life that could have been lived by someone else. "There are tears in my eyes as I write because even though I am flawed in so many ways, I am so proud of myself and what I have achieved so far. I see all the things that have happened as the things that have made me who I am today. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them," says Liam.

Five years ago Liam was in a very different place. He ended up taking drugs to blot out life.

"But it was like a vicious circle, The drugs made life worse but they were a solution to the problem of life."

Yet, despite his problems, Liam managed to secure a job as treasurer at his local bingo hall and it was there where he made that fateful decision which would lead to him becoming a criminal on the run.

"I went to work just like every other day, the only difference being that I had slept in a park the night before and I had a future of rough sleeping ahead of me. But when I got into the cash office I found that the previous weeks takings hadn't been collected, this meant that there was double the amount of cash there that night than I had seen at any other time. My drug addled mind quickly connected the dots and I came to the conclusion that this was surely an opportunity given to me by some higher power, for this to happen today, of all days, it must mean something?

"So, obviously, I took the money. It was an easy choice really, I thought to myself I can wait and hope that things got better or I could actually do something about it and, besides, I didn't really have much to lose. So at the end of my shift I walked out with a duffle bag full of cash."

Liam admits his heart was racing. He met up with a pal and they decided to go to Amsterdam. "It seemed like a Utopia at the time," he recalls.

Despite not having any passports, they managed to get into Amsterdam four days later. "We quickly realised the seriousness of what we had done and that we were now in a foreign country with no ID and with no knowledge of the language."

It was after some contemplation they decided to hand themselves in. "Knowing that by doing this we were forefeiting the next 10 years of our lives."

Anticipating a minimum sentence of between five to seven years, Liam received 15 months. "At this point I knew for a fact that I had no future."

He prefers to gloss over his time in prison "rest assured it was not a fun time. I was deeply depressed and prison was not helping my mental state at all," he recalls.

Following his release, Liam went to a Leeds bail hostel. He describes it as 'the darkest time of my entire life.'

The 24-year-old talks of how he eventually managed to transform his life through Inn Churches, the organisation he discovered while sleeping rough in Bradford.

"I am eternally grateful and I don't think I will ever be able to thank them enough for what they did," says Liam.

While labouring, initially at Bradford University, Liam became inspired to study and was able to secure a place at Leeds University where he had helped to build the library.

"Five years ago I had no future and no hope, but now I'm at university and I'm going to Africa. That is crazy to me, never in a million years could I ever have seen that coming. If you went back and told me where I'd be I would have said you were insane because it would be impossible for me to be where I am today. But here I am. The moral is to never give up, aim high and never doubt yourself because you never know what you are capable of."

Liam hopes people will support his charity mission and he also hopes to raise the profile of the work of Inn Churches.

For more information visit justgiving.com/liam-knights or https://m.facebook.com/liamknightsics