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Javier Moreno: Wrestling a dream

By Carolyn Click, The State (Columbia, S.C.) on

Published in Senior Living Features

It's been said that "life is like a deck of cards and we each have to play the hand we're dealt." While somewhat funny and somewhat cynical, this statement is 100 percent true. As a kid, if I had a chance to start all over or to be the card dealer of life, I probably would have cheated or fought hard to deal myself a better hand.

Javier Moreno wrote those words this winter as he prepared for a rite of passage common to so many high school seniors -- the college essay and application process.

Only Javier didn't think college would be in his future. His young life was defined by family chaos, frequent moves and missed school, and most dramatically, the 2010 conviction of his stepfather on charges of trafficking cocaine.

A bad hand in the game of life.

One night in 2013, the family upheaval sent Javier reeling out of the family's apartment and under a railroad bridge near Two Notch Road. He lived there for 25 days, homeless, falling asleep to the sounds of the vibrating trestles.

"Some nights I cried a little bit," Javier said. "Whenever I'd see people or go to work I'd cut it out because I don't want people to see me like that."

He scrounged for food to eat and towels to cradle his head at night. Javier, who never knew his birth father, dreamed of what his life would have been like "if I had a real dad."

Eventually, old family friends, James and Irene "Carmen" White, people who had known Javier's grandparents in the late 1960s during their Army days in Germany, persuaded him to come live with them. They already had opened their home to Javier's older brother, Angel Crespo.

Javier's wrestling coach at Richland Northeast High School, Matthew Hall, became his chief mentor, "the full force impact in my life." Team members -- boisterous teenage boys one wrestling mom described as a "band of brothers" -- became his extended family.

And now, Javier Moreno, a sweet-faced young man with an open smile and a big heart, is being defined by his achievements: third-ranked high school wrestler in the state, honor roll student, maybe a college-bound senior.

But that's getting ahead of his story.

Flashing blue lights, five police cars, and a paddy wagon came to my apartment in the Chimneys. At the age of thirteen, grown men put me on the ground and had guns pointing at me. This is a sight and a feeling that I'll never forget. Images always flash in my mind to this day of cops watching and shouting at me.

On May 19, 2010, Richland County deputies stopped Javier's stepfather, Joseph R. Santos, on a routine traffic violation. Santos and a companion riding in the car were found to be in possession of 125 grams of cocaine, according to the police report.

With enough probable cause to execute a search warrant, deputies rushed to the family's apartment, where they discovered 3.5 kilos of cocaine. Javier and his brother, scared and shaking, were placed on the ground while deputies carried out the search.

Santos was arrested on charges of trafficking more than 400 grams of cocaine, Richland County criminal records show. A first-time offender, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of trafficking between 10 and 28 grams of cocaine. He remained free on a $25,000 bond until he was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2013. He is currently behind bars.

As his stepfather awaited sentencing, Javier was living with his mother and Santos, and attending Richland Northeast High School in Richland 2. But life was anything but placid, he said.

In ninth and 10th grades, Javier's grades by his own admission were terrible. He worked long hours in a restaurant after school -- and sometimes during school -- to make money for his family. Irene White, 80, whom Javier affectionately calls "Grandma Carmen," said Javier rarely spoke about troubles in the family when he came to visit.

"You know, he has one thing, one nick," James White, 70, said. "He covers for everything. He can't help it ... No matter what, he is always going to try to put his best foot forward and sometimes you know something is wrong but you don't have no real proof."

"He always wants to please everybody," Irene White said.

Upheaval erupted in the family one night in the summer before Javier's junior year.

"Grandpa James" White remembers that evening. He was called to the family's apartment, talked with police who had arrived on the scene, and tried to smooth things over.

But an upset Javier disappeared into the night -- leaving behind a new pair of wrestling shoes. White and Javier's brother Angel searched in vain.

I was always doing things on my own; so, I didn't want to put my problems on anybody else and deal with things as a "man". The nights were long and I had nowhere to go. My only home for twenty-five days and nights was under a bridge. My homelessness seemed different than others because I had a job that supplied me a little, but I wasn't alone. I supplied food and money to help out other homeless people living under the bridge, even if it meant I wasn't eating that night.

It took weeks, but White, who is 70, eventually learned where Javier was staying.

"When I found out he was living under a bridge, I thought, 'oh no,'" James White remembered. He and Carmen anguished over the situation, but it was fall before he could persuade Javier to come live with them.

While he lived under the bridge, Javier confided to a few teammates about his tenuous living situation but told no adults. One offered him temporary residence, which he accepted.

"Cat" Crumlich, whose son Noah wrestles on the Richland Northeast High team, remembers Javier hanging out at her house that summer and acting like a typical teenager.

"He was clean; he was neat. It was always, 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am,'" Crumlich recalled. "I know he was at my house when he was homeless, but you never would have known." Javier had a fondness for Crumlich's white macadamia nut cookies, so she always kept a supply for him and the other wrestlers.

Javier's stint of homelessness did not diminish his devotion to wrestling. He kept coming to summer wrestling practice, although Coach Hall had an inkling something was not right because he saw Javier walking everywhere.

"You couldn't tell. He was showing up for workouts; he was still getting things done. He was showing up for work," Hall said. "He was happy. It was insane to see him."

And this: "The only reason he ever opened up to me is because I had to earn it."

About that time, a Richland 2 school social worker got involved in Javier's life.

"When I first met Javier, he told me he had walked to Dick's Sporting Goods and had bought a tent to live in," Jill Lawson said. Because of continuing family dysfunction, Lawson helped both Javier and his brother gain designation as unaccompanied youths, which provides assistance under the federal McKinney-Vento Act for youths who no longer live at home.

"He is incredibly resilient," said Lawson, who now works at Palmetto Place Children's Shelter. "He will be one who beats the statistics."

She said wrestling and Coach Hall "have played a huge role in his life. Coach Hall -- that was his escape."

Coach Hall is the type of person that I had never encountered before in my life. He gives everything to just make sure that my life is better now than like it was in the past. I give everything in wrestling because I owe him a lot for being here every step of the way.

It wasn't always cakes and cream when Javier and Matthew Hall met on the wrestling mat at Richland Northeast.

 

"One of my first interactions with Javier was a huge argument," Hall, who teaches math, recalled. "It was the fourth or fifth day of coming into practice and doing what he wanted to do."

Hall eliminated Javier, then a 10th-grader, from a team that included his older brother, Angel.

But Hall, who had Javier in one of his classes, kept up the encouragement that first rocky season and dangled the prospect of freestyle or Greco-Roman wrestling after its conclusion.

"So he came and wrestled freestyle and then he became one of the guys," Hall said. "He became one of the guys that ARE wrestlers, that show up day in and day out, that call you when you are at home on Sunday and want to get an extra workout in."

Javier's earlier academic record remained a big stumbling block to his sports participation.

"We got through one hurdle and in his 11th grade year he had some bumps," Hall said. "He spent the summer training with us, going through all this work, on the team, he's beating people all over the state, he wants the opportunity to get to show -- and he's academically ineligible.

"And he is the only human being I've ever said who is academically ineligible and it's not completely his fault," Hall said.

His study habits and attitude changed when Javier moved in with the Whites. They laid down two rules: He had to quit his restaurant job and concentrate on school and wrestling.

Now, amid Javier's and Angel's wrestling medals that grace a wall of honor in the Whites' den, there is a framed A-B honor roll certificate.

For the Whites, the greatest joy is the prospect of Javier following his older brother to college.

"I think it is in him to be something," said James White, who is retired from the military and the U.S. Postal Service. "It's in both of them. I'll give them the world all day long, if they just succeed."

And it turned out that Javier Moreno, a compact 126-pound fireplug of a guy, had the makings of an exceptional wrestler. He has excelled in Midlands meets this season and on Saturday, he took first place at regionals.

Hall predicted he could wrestle at the Division 2 level in college. A rival coach made Javier's heart lift just the other day by suggesting that maybe, just maybe, he had Olympic potential.

"My teammates haven't seen me lose," Javier said. "I kind of think that would make them lose courage. When I go on the mat, I know my team expects me to win."

But beyond his natural talent, "he's a good person on his own," Hall said. "He shows up at (freestyle) tournaments and he'll work out with all these little kids while warming up, play around with them and talk to them, ask them how their day is."

This is what Javier Moreno told his coach recently:

"Have you ever noticed how people feel when you ask them how their day is? I started doing that and people just smile at me. It's crazy."

Today, the cards that I have been dealt, which seemed impossible to win with, started to work. I had been losing, but now I realize I have what it takes to win. My grandma and Coach Hall have each dealt me a new hand. Their compassion and support serves as the highest spade in the deck. I'm ambitious and hopeful now. College was never my choice, but now I desire to learn and grow academically.

The future is wide open and inviting to Javier Moreno.

Maybe Javier said, he will try to go to Limestone College, Coach Hall's alma mater, "so I can beat his records." He thinks he might want to be a teacher. But he also dreams of taking his "band of brothers" with him wherever he is accepted so they can keep on wrestling and studying together.

On Friday night, Javier burst into the White household, the wrestling team's usual Friday night hangout, fresh from a 35-34 win over rival Spring Valley High.

"You should have seen me Grandpa James," an exuberant Javier exclaimed about an opponent he had bested. "I spladled him," referring to a move that sends an opponent to the mat with his buttocks up in the air.

He checked in on Grandma Carmen, who is diabetic and on oxygen therapy, making sure she had eaten and her blood sugar levels were good.

The front door opened as more team members, freshly showered, poured in: Frank Velez, Rasheed Ansaar, Devon Moore, Jarren Manning, Noah Crumlich, Faaifo Passi, Isiah Passi,a couple of other non-wrestling friends. Angel, who goes to Midlands Tech and serves as an assistant coach to the team, was there.

There were hugs to Grandma Carmen, who urged the boys to get something to eat; handshakes for Grandpa James, who called out to one: "Mr. Invincible!" Parents checked in by phone or in person to make sure the teenagers arrived.

"I usually have five or six guys over, but Grandpa James said tell everybody," Javier explained. A raised eyebrow and grin from the elderly man, "I did?"

The teenagers brought their gear to stay overnight so they could rise at 6 a.m. Saturday to travel to the regionals. Angel teed up video games; some practiced wrestling moves. Newcomers were warned good-naturedly that they might be the victim of an initiation prank and wake to find their nails painted with Grandma Carmen's polish.

"This is the place to be," Rasheed Ansaar said.

Javier, who turned 19 Sunday, surveyed the cheerful chaos, smiling. Frank Velez, the team captain, leaned back against a sofa.

"We come here to be a family," he said. "Javier is like my brother."

Sometimes, Javier thinks about that solitary time under the bridge, but he puts the best face on it.

"I go by and I say, 'Hey, I left the lights on."

(c)2015 The State (Columbia, S.C.)

Visit The State (Columbia, S.C.) at www.thestate.com

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(c) The State (Columbia, S.C.)

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