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My dad was a Haitian immigrant, born in 1927, and my mom is half Honduran, half white, from California. She was born in 1954. I was born when she was 27, and my dad was 54. Interestingly, he passed away when I was 27, and she was 54. So 27 and 54 have always felt like meaningful numbers to me. My mom and dad didn’t stay together long, so she raised me on her own in New Orleans. She has Crohn’s disease, which she passed on to me, along with multiple other serious health issues, including MS. When I was a young child, she had a health crisis on public transportation that led to her being hospitalized, and I ended up placed in foster care. With most of her family in California or Honduras, it was a struggle for her to recover, regain custody, and get back on her feet. After bouncing around foster care for a few years, I finally rejoined her. Witnessing some difficult situations through all of that shaped my perspective. My mom eventually became a child advocate and a foster parent, adopting many of the kids she fostered. Now she’s living in Chicago, and we reconnected earlier this year for the first time in years at a Pine meeting. I was an A student in the gifted program from 1st to 9th grade. The summer before 10th grade, I had an internship at Tulane University and received a $1,000 stipend. Being poor, I wanted to invest it. Instead, I got arrested on a Greyhound bus traveling from Dallas with a couple of pounds of cheap Mexican brick weed the weekend I got out of school for Christmas break. I pretended to be an adult as long as I could, while my mom reported me missing in Louisiana. Eventually, they figured out who I was and transferred me to juvenile detention in Louisiana. I spent a day and a half in an adult jail in Mesquite, Texas, at 15. Then they sent me to a juvenile boot camp program in Hunt, Louisiana, near the prison. When I got home, my mom never treated me the same. She had married some guy who delivered pizzas, and I was steadily plotting my escape to independence. So my next big idea was to learn how to make crack cocaine. I sold my video games and anything of value, bought an ounce of powder, learned how to cook it up, and started selling crack--all at 15 years old. I was actually pretty successful, staying organized and offering the best prices. But soon enough, I was robbed, shot at, pistol-whipped, and hassled by older guys upset with me. I stopped selling on the corner after an older guy I’d looked up to put a machine gun to my nose and told me never to come back on his block. After that, I switched up my approach. One day, walking home from school, I saw my mom standing in the middle of the street, fuming, screaming my full name, and praying in Spanish. She dragged me by the ear to the backyard, where our concrete patio was covered with crack rocks in various sizes, and my dog was sprinting around the yard, high as a kite. My dog had spread about nine ounces of crack all over the yard. That was my entire re-up, every dime I’d made. She took me to the living room, where all my stuff was packed in black trash bags, and told me I had to leave. My godmother let me stay with her for a while, and I ended up dropping out for the rest of that school year. That’s why I went to five high schools. I got kicked out of almost every one for fighting, mostly defending nerds and special ed kids who used to get bullied. Through it all, I held onto my MPC 2000, using it to make beats. Those beats eventually got placed, which generated enough money for me to buy my first house at 18. That same year, my mom, newly divorced from the pizza guy, moved in with me during my senior year. I scored a 31 on the ACT, basically guaranteeing me admission anywhere in the South. I attended Tulane University on an academic scholarship and secured a walk-on spot on the baseball team, which would have paid well, since my academic scholarship would’ve been refunded. I’d have gotten around $15,000 per semester back, but I hurt my knee. Instead of rehabbing, I started partying, selling my pain pills, and stopped going to class. Eventually, I dropped out of Tulane and transferred to the University of New Orleans, but paying tuition, my mortgage, and living expenses turned out harder than I expected. I worked various jobs while pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine. I worked as a veterinary technician until I realized that wasn’t for me. Then I became a deli manager, worked at Sears in the shoe department, and took the midnight to 4 AM shift at UPS loading trucks. I went to school all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Despite working nonstop, I was always broke, so I started hustling on the side and basically scamming. I sold everything from throwback jerseys to two-way pagers and nearly any illegal substance you could imagine. So it felt natural when I started selling powder again, this time focusing on a working-class clientele instead of street corners. My biggest clients were with a company called Inspection Specialists in Marrero, Louisiana. Every Friday, I’d meet them to collect payment and drop off new product. Eventually, I met the owner, who told me he had guys on payroll making up to $80,000 a year. To me, that seemed like a fortune. I asked if I could work for him, but he said no. After a year of pestering him and attending every safety meeting to get a feel for the job, he finally hired me. I quit my other three jobs, and within the first year, I became a technician. The next year, I was a project manager, then an inspector, planner, and drafter, grooming myself to become a chief inspector. Katrina came and went. I renovated and rented out my house and moved in with friends. In 2008, when my father passed away, I went to Memphis for his funeral. My dad had worked in the recording industry and was well-off, though I never benefited from that lifestyle due to his situation with my mom. She never put him on child support--maybe out of fear, I think now, because learning about my father was eye-opening. I always knew he hung out with a lot of younger guys, but I didn’t connect the dots until much later. He was a terrible influence on me, and I’m just grateful I didn’t let it affect me permanently. Still, I realized that a lot of my high school troubles were influenced by my involvement with him and his lifestyle. During the funeral week, I was driving around in his brand-new Mercedes-Benz SUV, hitting up strip clubs and going wherever the fun was, trying to look like a big shot. After the trip, I flew home with a few of his Rolex watches and some other mementos. A few days later, my sister called, asking what I’d been doing with the car. I told her I was just driving it and that there was no damage when I dropped it off. She then asked me what I’d left in Dad’s car. I told her I hadn’t left anything; I even cleaned it out before returning it. I remembered there had been a duffel bag with some sneakers and stuff, but I didn’t even look inside. She hung up on me. Then my brother called, telling me that there were five bundles of heroin, each weighing a couple of pounds, in that bag in the back of the car. He told me not to worry about it, that it was our dad’s, but not to mention it to my sister. That was the moment when everything clicked. I finally understood the kind of lifestyle my dad had been living. The time he’d spent in jail in the 80s for taxes suddenly made sense. So many pieces fell into place. Around this time, the BP oil spill happened, and with drilling in the Gulf drastically reduced, my hours went from 60 a week to barely 40. Frustrated with the industry, I opened a skateboard shop with friends, and I also started working with an afterschool program, teaching a songwriting and music class. In the spring of 2010, one of my best students was murdered. That summer, my brother, his best friend, and his best friend’s brother were killed in a home invasion at the house we rented. Fearing for my safety and mentally destroyed, I ran to California, planning to stay just one week. On my last day before heading home, I literally tripped and fell into Applus RTD (via JanX), where I was hired on the spot. They gave me a vehicle, a $4,000 check, and a job with a monthly hotel stipend. I worked there for two years until Ryan Theil from Ashtead called. He’d heard I’d make a great sales guy and initially tried to move me to Baton Rouge. But having just had my first child and still fearing Louisiana, I agreed to work for Pine on the West Coast instead.