Lived Experience: The Reason I Founded SLA

It was a Sunday morning, and I remember it so clearly—Manville and Wilmington were the streets. I was 16, and I found myself in a place I had no business being. I was at a rented factory, surrounded by a scene that I should have known better to avoid—gambling, drugs, alcohol. It was a place where I was seeking something, maybe validation, maybe an escape, or perhaps just a way to feel something different.

The factory had two doors. I stood near the back one, lost in thought, when suddenly, chaos erupted. Someone broke down the front door. It was the police. In that instant, everything inside me screamed to run. But I forgot the most important rule: never be the first one out. In my panic, I flung open the back door and bolted.

"Freeze!" a police officer shouted, his gun pointed directly at me.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me, but this time felt different. There’s something indescribable about that moment when your life hangs in the balance. You feel the blood drain from your face, your legs turn to stone, and the world around you slows to a crawl. I should have stopped. I should have listened. But something inside me snapped, and I did the opposite—I ran. I ran around him, jumped the fence, and disappeared into the alley.

I think back to that day a lot. It’s as if a part of me died that day. Or maybe, it was the day I started to really live. For the first time, I began to reflect on how precious life is, how easily it can be taken away, and how badly I wanted to find a way out of the path I was on.

It took years to truly get on the right path. But that moment, that run through the alley, sticks with me. It’s a scar on my soul, a reminder of the fragile line between life and death, between lost and found.

That’s the lived experience that drives me every day at SLA Inc. I know what it feels like to be young, lost, and searching for something to fill the void. I know the lure of the streets, the pull of the wrong crowd, and the fleeting sense of belonging that comes from dangerous places. And that’s why I founded SLA Inc.—to help young people who are where I once was, to offer them a different path, a safer way to find validation, purpose, and a future.

This organization is more than just a job or a mission. It’s my way of giving back, of honoring that scared 16-year-old who ran for his life. It’s my way of saying, "I made it out, and you can too." Every tree we plant, every life we touch, is another step in reclaiming the beauty of life that I almost lost that day. And it’s a promise to the youth we serve: that no matter where you are or where you’ve been, there’s always a way forward, always a chance to run toward something better.