Difficult Footholds on the Road to Success

We were scheduled for the interview early last week for what I hoped was going to be an uplifting story about a young man breaking free from adversity and finding success.

But things took an unexpected turn.

So while this might be success story someday, it isn’t yet.

That the story of Jamal Dawes has gone anywhere at all is still remarkable. He was raised in Farmington, a city thin on opportunity for a fatherless, biracial boy with little means and little opportunity to get up and out.

He was 11 when he started getting into trouble with the law, stealing, breaking into homes. He was unsupervised and unschooled, unable to control the anger or fill the emptiness inside him.

“I had some issues in my family,” he says, quietly demurring when prodded to explain. “Personal issues.”

He was the last kid Romaine Serna expected would be interested in what she had to say during her visit last spring to the Youth Diagnostic Development Center in Albuquerque.

Serna, director of the New Mexico Commission for Community Volunteerism, had spoken to a group of eight males, including Dawes, from YDDC’s Boys’ Reintegration Program about an opportunity they might consider once they were released.

That opportunity was the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, a service-oriented group whose volunteers are deployed across the country to help educate disadvantaged students, render aid in storm-stricken communities and repair blighted neighborhoods.

	More information New Mexico Commission for Community Volunteerism: www.newmexserve.org AmeriCorps: www.americorps.gov

Members of AmeriCorps, which in New Mexico is overseen by Serna’s agency, commit to 10 months of service in exchange for a modest stipend, room and board and a $5,500 educational award after successful completion.

“Jamal seemed the least interested in what I was saying,” Serna said. “He looked like a tough kid, a large, muscular guy with attitude.”

But, afterward, it was Dawes who came up to her and asked to talk some more.

“He shared his history with me,” she said. “He wanted to turn his life around.”

She gave him her cellphone number and asked him to call her if he was truly interested in doing that through AmeriCorps.

“He called me every day after that,” she said.

Dawes had dreams.

“I want to travel the world,” he told me, even though the world might simply be that which stretches beyond Farmington. “I want to help people in need, and it’s a really good opportunity to do that.”

The AmeriCorps application process is a rigorous one, not for the weak-willed, Serna said. But with her help and Dawes’ determination, he was accepted into the Denver location of the program in October.

By all accounts, Dawes was doing well. His main job involved working with disadvantaged students at Escuela Tlatelolco, a bilingual school in the heart of Denver’s Latino community. Entries on his Facebook page exude the pride family and friends had in his accomplishment – and he had in himself.

“I’m going to prove to them haters that always put me down and said I won’t be anybody,” he wrote Dec. 29 as a New Year’s resolution. “I’m going to stay strong and keep moving forward and put all the s**t behind me and do me.”

Serna called him regularly. She felt sure he was the one who had the courage and the vision to succeed – so sure that she wrote me to suggest he might make for a good story.

I spoke briefly by phone to Dawes on Jan. 3 and again last Monday, and we arranged to speak again last Tuesday.

And, then, I couldn’t find him.

Numerous attempts later, he sent this text: “I’m sorry to tell you this but I’m no longer in AmeriCorps.”

After more coaxing, he finally agreed to speak to me. He said he needed to go home to Farmington to take care of his mother, because of a troublesome relationship.

“My mother needed me,” he said in a phone call from a friend’s house in Farmington. “So I had to leave the program.”

He resigned from the program last Monday and was sent home on a plane the next day.

By the time he arrived, his mother had already kicked out the person who had caused her grief.

“I felt at the time it was the reasonable thing to do for my mother,” he said, the regret heavy in his voice. “I’m sad, because, like I said, it was a good opportunity. I didn’t want to leave. I’m losing out.”

Dawes said AmeriCorps officials told him he could get back into the program, although he would have to go through the application process again.

Serna has offered to help.

“We can’t lose him,” she said.

For now, he said, he plans to stay with his friend, work the night shift stocking shelves at Walmart and keep an eye on his mom. He promised me he would stay out of trouble and consider getting back into the program in Denver.

But who knows?

He is 20 now, and he still has his dreams to get out. But dreams are amorphous things, becoming fainter, more distant, harder to reach as time passes and old ways take hold.

I’m still hoping to write that success story. I’m still hoping Dawes’ dreams take him there.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal