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        My name is Rodney Hughey. I was born in Detroit, Michigan. I was pretty much raised by my older brother, who was following anyone headed down a path of destruction from day one. My father used to work in car parts in the city of Detroit and sold drugs on the side. When I was three, I remember we had a beautiful Christmas, living a pretty good life, had two different cars and a pretty good house. By the time I was five, I was living in my grandmother's basement, with me and my brother and mother sleeping all in the same bed.
        Before I knew it, my father had lost everything. He was using drugs, and my mother was using drugs with him. The only alternative was for me and my older brother to go live with my grandmother. Our parents were out on the streets, doing everything and anything. My father was getting into trouble in the streets. He was in and out of jail, and my mother was running after him. So he moved to Seattle, Washington. My older brother moved out at age thirteen. By the time I was twelve, my father had him another woman in Seattle, expecting a baby.
        My mother had straightened up, for the most part. She'd worked her way off Welfare. After so long, she got tired of raising kids and working. When I was leaving to go out, she would be coming in. So I didn't see her too often. That's when things got really serious for me. She didn't have the time or the energy for me.
        The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I played football. That's the only time I actually straightened up because we had guys who cared and were father figures to us. But outside of football season, the only person who acted like he cared was a young guy about the same age who got a drug deal outside my house with a cousin, and was shot. I wondered, why is this happening to me? So as a young guy, I just sat back and watched a lot-a lot of stuff.
        My father didn't move back to Detroit until I was 21. I would go visit him in the summer time, but we never had a father-son relationship. Most of the things about being a man I had already learned, no matter if I wanted to or not. I learned firsthand that you need to keep your word, or it could be bad. With my father, the only thing we connected with was sports. He was a big time basketball player, but outside of sports, I never had a real connection with my father. I'm lucky to have my father, cause I have a lot of buddies that don't have either one of their parents or don't know where their parents are for whatever reason. So I try my best to forgive.
        I can't forget all the things I had to go through. My parents put me and my brother through a lot of stuff. There was a time where we were eating cheese and crackers and our water was turned off. So they sent me and my brother to the store to steal juice so we'd have something to drink in the house. When we were young, we thought it was cool to take stuff that didn't belong to us, but I learned later that it's not fun-at all. It didn't hit me until I got older that they were out using drugs. My brother knew, and that's why he got out.
        I went to live with my father for the first semester of high school. He made me catch a bus thirty miles to school to attend school way out. His thing was that he was the man of the house and any money that was made and came through the house went to him. He didn't work; they got public assistance. He and his wife did whatever they did to get money. My mother was getting a child support check from him, but he tricked me into signing papers so the check would come back to him. I never saw another dime after that. I was fourteen, and he said I had to pay rent to live there. So I went back home, but my mother was tired of raising kids. I was alone most of the time, so I didn't have anyone to return to.
        When I was eleven, girls were forced upon me. My sixteen-year-old cousins had me under pressure to do things, and that's what I did. But I didn't know how to talk to girls. My father said, "Be a ho, be a ho." I didn't have nobody to talk to about it. In public I was, "Oh, hey, Rodney!" but for real, I didn't know which direction I was headed in. Football was all I knew. I felt alone all the time.
        By the time I was sixteen, I didn't go to school in the city of Detroit; I went to school in the suburbs. There were a lot of guys age sixteen who were driving Ford Expeditions to school and wearing nice clothes. All the girls wanted to hang with them.  I wondered where they were getting this stuff. There's no mystery how they were getting it. I remember one winter when there was a lot of snow on the ground, and I had only a windbreaker for a coat, and had nobody to help me get a coat. So it hit me-"I can't take it no more."
        I knew some cousins of mine who lived on the east side of town, who were more advanced than I was at the time. We didn't deal drugs. To us turning drugs was too slow a process. More times than not, you'd get caught. Big-ticket items was the thing. Before I knew it, I had a stolen Escalade. It was from a chop-shop; we tagged the numbers. All of a sudden I had a nice car-I was the only guy who drove his own car to the prom. And I had a lot of money-well, it was a lot of money for a sixteen-year-old. I was a football guy, and I was getting all kinds of scholarships from everywhere. To me school wasn't even important. I was gold. It was just for the fame.
        I kept doing those illegal things-until I was caught. In March of my senior year, I was facing sixty years in prison. While in jail, I saw a couple of guys get raped. It didn't happen to me, but it hit me, like, this could be my life. Luckily, I was released for lack of evidence.
        I came home focused on graduating. When I went to jail, I lost my scholarship to Michigan State, so I knew I had to go somewhere else, like a junior college, so I focused on that.
I went to junior college in California. I had my own apartment, working for my coach, who was paying half my rent. But he ended up getting fired, so I didn't have anybody to work for. So I took out a loan, but the loan didn't come through in time, so I had to go back to Detroit. That is when I really understood-I was not a baby no more.
        I had no money. I was focused in on going to school. My mother could not understand that for some reason. All my buddies were at school, and I was at home, dealing with being at home. I decided just to go to summer school and take it from there. So I worked odd jobs. But my mother would come down on me cause I wasn't making the money she was used to having. My mother had stopped working, so she'd come down on me and make me pay rent. So I'm still in a pressure situation.
        Then my cousin and uncle came to visit me and my brother, to talk. We were hanging out at a house where there was no phone, and my brother went out to use a pay phone. My uncle didn't tell us that the brother of the woman he was seeing didn't like him. When my brother left, the woman's brother walked right in and told us to leave. As soon as he said that, the world exploded-all types of gunshots started going off. We had to get down cause it was right around us. My brother and another guy walked in, and at first I thought my brother was shot, but he was okay. My uncle drew his pistol, which made my cousin draw his pistol. The guy who started it tried to run, but my cousin got him by the back of his jacket and started to shoot him in the back of the head; instead, my uncle shot him up under his chin. So we had to get out of there. So we all ran to the car.
        I'm shocked that this is going on. Regardless of what happened, this is what I'm thinking, "I've got to get out of this car." So I pleaded with them to let me out. I didn't do anything, but I was there, so I'd be just as guilty. Luckily, I had a friend who lived nearby who came and picked me up, let me stay there, and took me home the following day.
        After seeing what I saw that could happen to me, now I wind up with a chip on my shoulder. I kind of went back to my old ways cause I was tired of not having. I was tired of everything.
        One night I was at my grandmother's house, and my auntie was saying little things about me being home from school, and I felt like she was picking on me. I had $3 to my name, and I'd missed the last bus. It was a long walk home. I was walking and thinking about how broke I was. I'd had to let my hair grow out to an afro cause I didn't have money to get a haircut. So I'm walking and I see a guy who has a nice car, talking on a cell phone. At this time of my life, I always carried a weapon, so I've got a gun on me this day. I felt like people weren't really seeing me. I didn't know what to do. A rage came over me. I'd felt like this before, but not in a long time. I'd robbed people before, so in my head, I said, "I'm gonna rob him."
        So I walked up to the guy and got close to him and said, "What ya got?" He's on the phone, so he says, "Let me talk to this crack-head for a minute and I'll call you back." That in itself made me just furious-for someone to think I looked like a crack-head. I couldn't accept it. So I got out my pistol and said, "Just give me everything you got." I was close to him, and we were on a busy street. The guy grabbed my arm, so I had to get him off me, so I shot off my gun and he falls. I was kind of like, shocked. But I picked up everything I could and took off running.
        I had enough money to go to summer school. For seven weeks I took a full load and worked, trying to get myself ready for the next football season.
        One night I was hanging out at my grandmother's house. I was happy because I was finally back to where I wanted to be. But then a guy I was talking to pulled a gun on me and said, "I could just end you right here." I didn't do anything at the time because I thought I was transferring to play football. But then that fall, my high-school lost my transcripts. I didn't know what to do. But I knew what I had to do. I had to go see the guy that pulled a gun on me.
        So I waited for this guy in the bushes for hours. When he got home, I ran up and hit him and kept on beating him. I did whatever I could to inflict as much pain as possible-whatever it took. After that, I couldn't go back to see my grandmother, who I was really close with. I didn't want none of that stuff to come back on my grandmother, so I stayed away.
        I went to school, though, but that was still hard because I didn't have a car. So I would stay in my room all day cause, any time my mother saw me throughout the day, it was like WWIII. She'd just go crazy on me. I'd sit in my room all day and then go to class. If I had to walk or take the bus, I'd go to class.
        I couldn't accept the fact that all my buddies were playing ball, and I was struggling doing this stuff. But I kept on going to school through the fall, walking to school with my feet bleeding. I didn't have insurance, so I'd wrap my feet in an ace bandage and keep walking to school, with my feet bleeding, still hoping to transfer.
        I had to get out of Detroit. I would talk to other schools, but they wouldn't accept me. I had four Fs on my college transcript because I didn't finish a term at one school. So I went out to see my father in Seattle. I thought it would be a better deal for me out there, but bottom line, my father just wanted someone to pay a loan on a house. He still wanted rent. I was taking out loans at school, hoping someone would help me out. I didn't know nothing about going to school; I just knew I didn't want to go back to jail. Jail is for certain people, and it's just not me.
        The first quarter of school there, I got four As, a D, and a C. But the A classes were gym classes that weren't credited, which hurt my chances of getting more financial aid. When it looked like I wouldn't get money for the next quarter, my father kind of transformed on me. After we had an argument, he kicked me out. I had met a girl. I needed some place to sleep, so I went to stay with her. I prepared to transfer again, but no school would accept me because of my grades. So I went back to Detroit.
        My father then also moved back to Detroit, and he told me I was too old to go to school-"You might as well just give up." My mother was the same way. I had nobody to turn to about being in school. I don't know if it was jealousy that drove me or just not wanting to be in the situation I was in. My friends would come home and they were doing good. I wanted to mirror them. I felt like I owed it to them to do something, even if I gave it a shot and it didn't work out.
        I tried fourteen or fifteen colleges around the country. This is the time I got hooked up with Concord University. I couldn't get an official transcript because I didn't have the money, so I sent Concord a printout of my grades. Concord accepted me. I was counting down the days until spring semester when I could play ball and go to school.
        In the middle of November came a warrant for my arrest from the county sheriff on the same charge I was released on back when I was in high school. I was in jail for about two and a half weeks. The prosecutor said they had enough evidence to convict me of armed robbery, which had a 60-year sentence.
        I don't know what was working for me. They didn't have the right gun that was used in the initial crime report. There were no witnesses. The person who was assaulted and robbed was serving time, not looking to get out for another fifteen years. The case was dismissed, and I was released again. I believe in God. There's something or someone out there who had to be looking out for me. Any time you can be released from prison twice, somebody's looking out for you. Or being in situations like with my cousins and not getting caught or hurt or shot. Anything could have happened. So I figure there's a higher source, a higher power. I praise that higher power for keeping me going, and also praise the people I've lost in the process of all this stuff. They didn't know they inspired me to be a man who respects other people's lives.
        January, 2004, I got to Concord. I didn't have a car, didn't have a room, didn't have a meal plan. I had no books. So I went to Coach Quick and begged him to help me. I needed $400 to pay my tuition. He said he'd try, and he did it. From then on, I have been on a full football scholarship. I'm captain of the football team. I try to do the best I can.
        The reason I'm in college is that there's someone else like me somewhere who is ending up like I almost ended up. If they're looking to the wrong person or giving up on themselves, I cannot let that happen. If I can make it this far, I'm sure others can make it a lot further than I can. So I figure if I can get this part done and get out into real life, work with some guys, work with some kids who've been where I have, I can tell them my story and help them with what they're going through-kids who don't have anyone to talk to. This is the real reason for everything, even the football stuff. It's not really for me no more. There's someone out there who has no idea where they're headed right now, and there's nobody telling them jail is not the place to be. I'm not proud of a lot of stuff I did to people; it's just a part of my life I gotta deal with. But I couldn't go back to doing those things. I'm far removed from those things.














        Coming to Concord gave me a chance to clear my mind, and when I tell my story to these guys here, I can see that I have an impact on them. Some of the guys on the football team here are closer to me than my family. When I got here and had a chance to expand myself, my purpose became bigger than me. I still go home to keep focused on reality. I visit my family, see their situation, soak up everything, so that it's in my head that I can't go home because there's nothing to go home to. That way, when I get back here, I've got a renewed purpose. Being here at Concord has been a blessing. Everything here has been a dream come true. No matter what I do or where I end up, I can never forget the people I've met here.













        I learned firsthand that you cannot make a career out of selling illegals. There's no pension with it, no retirement plan. Things-clothes, cars-don't mean anything. If you go to jail, you'll come home with nothing but a felony record. You can make just as much money legally; that way you can turn your family's future around. Instead of fancy cars or clothes, buy real estate. I can leave a house to my children. You cannot leave a pair of Jordans to nobody. You have to educate yourself. If you don't, you're headed for destruction. You might look good, but you're gonna crash harder at the end of the day. The only people who really understand my way of thinking are coming out of jail. It's too late then.
        My cell mate in jail told me, "If it's meant to be, it's up to me." In other words, if anything is meant to happen, you've got to put in the work to do it. It's about what you want. You got to step up to the plate and stay focused on whatever it is you want to accomplish.

Since graduating from Concord in 2007, Rodney has worked as a crisis intervention counselor, football coach, and admissions counselor. In 2009 Rodney was hired in the position of graduation coach at Lexington Senior High School in NC to work with at-risk students in the surrounding county of Davidson. In addition, he is assistant football coach at Greensboro College.