Deandre Jones Makes U-Turn In Life
When Deandre Jones was in the tenth grade he decided to bring his mom's gun to school as a student at East Kentwood.
"I always have been a super intelligent kid and I just wanted people to know that I was about that life and sometimes as a young person you go through fazes when you are just trying to let people know who you are.
Although I am a very strong person and people know what I am about, I was trying to be known for the wrong things. Instead of being the cool guy or the athlete or the nerd, for some reason I wanted to be known as the guy who was about that life. I am not one of those people who pretend to be from the hood because I was really from the hood with poverty and true struggle. I was really just trying to let people know that they came from the same environment that I was from but from a different city because I am originally from Chicago, Illinois. So bringing a gun to school in the tenth grade, I can remember hearing my mother screaming really loud while asking me why I had brought the gun to school.
The gun was in my mom's truck and I just grabbed it. I wasn't trying to hurt or kill anybody, I just wanted people to know that I toted the heat (gun) and that I would do whatever I had to do to protect myself. As I look back at the situation, it was extremely stupid and I found out that someone had gotten $500 for reported me to Silent Observer and that is how I got caught. I was showing a bunch of people and letting them know that I had a gun on me. I remember going to my locker at fourth hour to check on the gun and it was not in my locker. I lied to the safety officer and told him that someone had stolen my I-pod and asked him to go through the camera footage and check to see who had stolen it," said Deandre.
"They brought me to the office and told me to sit there and the next thing I knew the Sheriff's department showed up. They told me that they had found a fully loaded fire arm in your locker so you need to come with us. I walked out of the school with the sheriff department, sat in the back of the care until they transported me to the Kent County Juvenile Detention Center. I remember walking through the juvenile halls after I had gotten checked in and my exact words to myself were, 'Deandre, this is not you and when you get out you are going to play basketball and you are going to graduate from high school'. So I did my time in juvenile detention, which was about four months for the gun and then they transferred me to a residential home called Pine View Homes were I spent six months. I remember playing basketball and learning a lot of different things that I never will forget. Like the slop buckets which farmers used because they didn't believe in waiting food.
So whenever we had left over food we had a pig slop bucket and we would have to carry the food to the pigs. I played a lot of basketball, soccer and did a lot of other cool activities. Eventually I was let go and I came back to Grand Rapids and went to Day Treatment which was a juvenile detention school and I got student of the week and of the month several times. My probation officer led me to Light House Academy where I think I did three years. My sophomore year I was just being me and establishing myself and everyone knew who I was so I didn't have to be something that I wasn't. That is very important in today's society because everyone is not comfortable with being themselves. From my own experiences I have learned to step into my own power, love who I am and to be who I am unapologetically. Gordon Lighthouse Academy I began to set my self up to be a leader and stepping into my power but in my junior year I got into a fight and I ended up getting kicked out of school. They kicked me off of the basketball team and I didn't get to play any of that year. I remember our coach who was a woman, sitting me down and really helped me see my potential as a leader and just becoming everything that I had the potential to become.
Coming from underserved communities a lot of youth don't have figures in their community that they can look up to. She was the first person to sit down with me and helped me to see things that I had not seen in myself at that time. I just remember promising to myself that I was coming back to that school the next year, playing on the basketball team and winning the state championship," he continued.
"The next year I was a leader and I was focused on practicing and helping students in different classes. I really stepped into a leadership role. At the school, I helped students graduate and when I graduated we did end up winning the state basketball championship. I ended up being featured in a lot of news artices. I was on Miranda Where You Live, magazines and I got a chance to tell people how I made a 360 degree change in my life. When I graduated from high school I was the next in line behind the Valedictorian. I have been able to inspire a decade of students and challenge them to take life serious and to strive for something. I still hear stories about how my leadership has impacted other young people and it is so amazing because I didn't even realize how me being a leader in doing positive things had such an impact on others who were watching me. Me being the leader I was inspired a lot of students to stay in school and graduate so that they can achieve something in life. That work led me to the safety task force and in 2018 I won the $10,000 grant to partner with the city of GR for a program for non violence. I also created my organization Jump Ahead o3c. I still have that visionary goal to create a community center all across the globe and being a business leader. I have won a lot of business and community awards. I just won award this year called Internet 2.0 Visionary Award where I have to fly to Las Vegas for something that I did here in Grand Rapids. I have a global vision for what I am doing and I have been able to get national business awards for gaming competitions that I did here locally. I am an inspiring, creative entrepreneur that came from true struggle. I understand the bariers and the processes that need to be put in place to be sure that students are safe and that parents lock their guns up. I have gone on to tell that story through a collaboration with thirty three authors across the United States and was able to tell my whole life story with other authors, athelettes, business people. There are a lot of kids who need to hear this story and know that they can do it to. I am no different from any young kid, except I wanted to strive for better and I wanted to be a better version of me and those are the things that will help some of these young people of today survive and become the best they can be."
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