Car Donation in Long Island

AJ Clemons is an Austin Can! student who will walk across the stage at the upcoming June Graduation Ceremony. “I was an A-B honor roll student throughout elementary and middle school. When I started high school the word “school” was not in my vocabulary. I was skipping class and I got into everything but the books. After a while I began to see myself stuck in the same pattern. The very same people I went to middle school with were walking the stage and I was left behind. I had to think long and hard about what I was going to do with my life. That was when I was introduced to Austin Can! Academy, where second chances are given. Most people in my shoes would have given up and dropped out but here I stand getting my high school diploma at the age of 22. None of my sisters or brothers graduated from high school. I am grateful and very happy to be the first. See, I know now, that high school is where adulthood begins. Austin Can! is where I learned new things, met great people, and began my new life. Now, I’m ready for college and look forward to a career in music and business management.”

Ashley Viera is a 21 year old student who is married with 4 children. Ashley just had her third child at the end of last school year. Despite the obstacles of being a mother and wife, Ashley has continued to come to school and is determined to finish. Currently Ashley is 8.5 credits away from graduation and will hopefully finish San Antonio Can! in June 2011. Ashley's Quote: "I like that my classes are shorter and I get out earlier so I can still have quality time with my 4 kids. That is why I came to San Antonio Can!"

Gabino is one of the students of the month at the Fort Worth Can! Academy Campus Drive. Gabino is currently a Junior and transferred to the Fort Worth Can! Academy 1 year ago from OD Wyatt High School. Gabino transferred to the Can! Academy because he had fallen behind on his credits because of his excessive absences. 

His original plan was to take the credits he lacked and transfer back to graduate with his peers; however, once he completed his credits, he decided to stay and graduate. "It was so much easier to focus because the class sizes are so much smaller and teachers have the time to help you one-on-one and I was tired of all the drama" said Gabino. He is on target to graduate 1 year from now.

When Eddie grew up with his mother, brother, and sister, a regular family meal was a tortilla with salt for seasoning.

His loving mother worked hard, but making ends meet was almost beyond her. His dad was not in the picture.

One day, Eddie came home from school to find his brother and sister hungry. He couldn’t take the sight of it any longer. “I decided that was enough. Something had to change.”

At fifteen, Eddie left the ninth grade to go to work.

Moving away from his mother and siblings in Arkansas, Eddie began living with his uncle, who had a construction job for him in San Antonio. There, Eddie had no friends. His absence from home was painful. The burden was lightened, however, by knowing that he made enough money to provide food and necessities for his brother and sister.

After some time, a co-worker many years older told Eddie that he saw something in him. “You know, you’re really good at this. But you could be doing much more. Why don’t you go to school? Why aren’t you in school?”

For Eddie, who left that path years before, the thought of graduating high school at twenty-one was far from appealing. But, his co-worker’s words worked on his imagination. He looked online and found Texans Can - San Antonio.

This was, Eddie says, “the best decision I ever made.”

At Texans Can - San Antonio, Eddie found staff and teachers who made him feel cared for—the first time he ever knew that feeling in school. He made friends. And he still worked construction, still sending money back home, while working for his high school diploma.

One day, one of Eddie’s friends, a fellow member on the basketball team, was struck by a car and died. Devastated by the loss, Eddie turned to the abundantly available emotional support from the staff at Texans Can. Through this time, Eddie connected with his math tutor, who became a mentor and friend. Eddie began to enjoy weekends.

“For the first time in my life, I actually got to be a kid.” His heavy responsibilities, he said, faded in those moments.

The impact Eddie’s mentor made on him stays with him to this day. Now, seven years after graduation, Eddie is an award-winning store manager for AT&T, a company he has stayed with since he graduated. He has traveled abroad, and he has purchased his second home. Because of his experiences at Texans Can - San Antonio and the success he has known since, he wants to give back, being a mentor to young men who, like him, have had to go without the love and guidance of a father.

Most important to Eddie is his family. Married with two small children, a six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, Eddie is grateful that they “will never know what it was like to struggle” as he did. “They will never know the pain of growing up without their father.”

And Eddie is a father figure to more than his children. Thanks to his hard work, his brother and sister were provided for. Both graduated and now, says Eddie, are “doing well,” and they now live in the same Arkansas community. If cousins need equipment so they can enjoy playing on the basketball team, Eddie is ready to provide. The beat of his heart is to be the father he never knew, and the one he found at Texans Can - San Antonio.

The new life he has found through Texans Can, Eddie says, is “truly amazing.”

Written By: Dametri Hubbard 

All my life I have had to overcome problems that I thought would never happen to me. I was born with asthma, and my little brother was born with Downs Syndrome. We are both black males, poor, and grew up in a bad neighborhood; we were born into problems. To top it off, a problem that I am still trying to overcome is the hard fight my mother put up against cancer for ten years leading to her ultimate death. She died on May 17, 2009. It still affects me every day of my life. 

That next year was one of the hardest years of my life. We were poorer than poor, living in Mason Manor trying to make it while my mama worked two jobs. She was then laid off because her employer felt she was supposed to enjoy her last days with her kids. No one could say the words “yo mama” without catching my fist in their teeth. That caused us to do a lot of moving. It seemed every school I went to there was always that one person who would always say it and make me mad. 

By 8th grade my mom thought it would be a good idea to move us to Pflugerville. It was a rough year, but I barely made it through. That summer my mama spent a lot of time in and out the hospital with medical procedures. It was now the first day of school at Pflugerville High. I made it through, went to football practice and ended up fighting with this guy. Luckily, I wasn’t suspended. The next day at school his homeboy approached me and said, “Let me see you do me like that…!” I didn’t say anything. I just started throwing a flurry of punches until he hit the floor. Then the whole football team jumped me in the main hallway. I injured three guys, so they expelled me and from the school district. The school called my mother out of bed to come get me. This only frazzled her more. 

I had to learn to control myself a little more. We ended up moving to some apartments. I transferred to another high school. The first year and a half there went alright, aside from the fact I was still slowly losing my mother. It was starting to be clearer that she would not be around for as long as I had thought. But I was going to school and taking care of business, the most important thing. Soon enough, the second semester of my sophomore year I was kicked out of high school for being an alleged gang member. 

That brought me to Austin Can! for a little while. It helped me out at the time by attending the PM session. In the morning I would take care of my mom, go to school from 12 to 4 and go straight back home to take care of her some more. That gave us alot of time to make memories. I finished the school year at Austin Can! with no problem. The following school year I decided to go back to my home high school, worst idea of my life. One day I had noone to call because I had just checked my mom into Seton hospital for her chemotherapy. That was the day I was expelled from AISD for gang relation and failure to ID. 

For two weeks I was out of school and in the hospital with my mother, watching her fade away slowly. Soon after she was shipped to San Antonio to a hospital specializing in cancer. She died in that hospital May 17, 2009. I made a promise to my mother that I would graduate and attend college so I could be rich and take care of her. I graduated from Austin Can! this past spring and kept my promise to my Mom, now I have to work on the second half of the promise.