I turned the corner of the old red brick building to approach the parking lot, and when I did, I saw Jaylaena with this terrified look on her face. Jaylaena was close friends with my younger brother Christopher who was suffering from mental illness and on the verge of dropping out. He had not attended school for weeks by this time, and therefore he was home when the event took place. Christopher informed Jaylaena that he had found my older brother Anthony deceased. This was the news she wore on her face and was about to deliver to me. As she approached, I knew something had happened to one or both of my brothers. My brothers suffered from mental illnesses stemming from an event that occurred to us years prior. Her voice began to quiver as she told me the news, and those present at the time may have thought that she was more saddened than I was as she spoke. Maybe it was something I anticipated or the shock of hearing it or its finality, but I did not cry initially. My focus what on my younger sister Emily, who I would be driving home. By this time, my friend Jordan who was much larger than me had already wrapped me in his bear hug and comforted me by telling me he had also lost his older brother years before. We walked back to the school to find Emily. My girlfriend, Erika, came running around the corner with tears in her eyes. She ran up to me, hugged me, looked me in the eyes, and asked if I was okay. I don’t remember my response, but I continued my pursuit of finding Emily. I soon got word that Emily was in the office of my basketball coach and that the whole school had heard the news. Jordan and Erika escorted me to the office to meet with my sister. They asked the usual questions, and I was adamant about getting on the road to drive home. We attended school in a town about 30 minutes from our hometown. My coach refused to let me drive home, even as I insisted that I was okay. We arranged to have another student drive my vehicle home while Emily and I rode with a coach. My brother Anthony had died from asphyxiation. Initially, I was so angry that I vowed never to give up as he did; however, my perspective changed after the report. My brother died while trying to live! The drugs created a foam-like substance that blocked his airway when he attempted to vomit. In minutes, Anthony went from giving up on life to fighting for his life. Anthony died on a Friday, and I was back in school on Monday. Anthony was the chosen one, and many thought he would be the first in our family to graduate college. I became determined to fill this void and was the first in our family to graduate college. Growing up in poverty, I joined the military to fund my education. I have always found a way to overcome the economics of higher education. I start physician assistant school soon, and with your help, I hope to receive funding. I have a family to support while in school, and I am fearful that we cannot afford it. Most PA students (>75%) come from higher SES backgrounds. Economic hurdles are a massive barrier for students like me; however, I will keep fighting to pursue my education regardless. Anthony taught me to fight, so that's what I will do. Thank you.

I am a parent to two beautiful daughters. They mean the world to me, and I want them to have an easier life than I grew up. My journey to higher education has not been easy. I grew up poor and raised by a single mother. I joined the military to fund my undergraduate education. I want my daughters to have more options than I had after high school and not feel like they have to join the military or take out loans for college. My daughters are three and five years old, and they already have a Uniform Gift to Minors Account (UGMA) and 529 plans. My wife and I are both teachers, and our salaries pay the bills; however, there is little left for my daughter's accounts. I will graduate with my first masters degree this summer and start my second immediately. The pursuit of these degrees will provide us with more financial flexibility regarding investments for my children. Once I become a physician assistant, my wife will pursue her masters degree as a school psychologist. Becoming a physician assistant will allow my wife to pursue her goal full-time. The overall goal is to increase our financial freedom while at the same time showing our children a good work ethic. Our future goals and aspirations are reliant on my ability to achieve higher education. My road to higher education was and continues to be strenuous. I start physician assistant school in a few months, and I am still writing this because I have no idea how I will pay for my school. I am taking out my retirement to help pay the bills while in school. Mathematically we will burn through that amount quickly. As a father, I am worried about our quality of life change over the next two years and wonder if we would be better off if I didn't attend. It is a difficult decision as I have worked for five years to get to this point, and now I am questioning it. My family will benefit immensely if I can receive assistance and make it through these tough headwinds. Thank you.

To me, community means togetherness. Within a community, we can choose to rise or falter together. Our communities are representative of our ideals, and when we focus those ideals on inflicting a positive change, we can achieve great things. I give back to my community through my current job as a teacher and coach while also working at the local homeless shelter as an EMT and on-call with the local hospital during COVID-19 spikes and serving my country in the Air National Guard. Through these multiple avenues, I can do my part to mold our future, help those most in need, and alleviate the stress from some of our healthcare workers to stay in our community. One of the greatest things I ever did in my community was take in a homeless child. The phrase "it take a village to raise a child" became my life. I worked closely with Josh's family to help him grow into a good young man and the first to graduate high school. Taking him in and seeing the man he is becoming helped our community by having one less potential drop out. I plan to work as a physician assistant and develop or work with a company that provides primary care to geographically isolated Native Americans or homeless populations. I plan to implement a mobile primary care unit. Within this unit, I will be able to go to the patients that have barriers inhibiting their access to me. These populations desperately need quality primary care that is consistent, and I plan to fill that void as much as possible in the future.

I have demonstrated leadership in many ways and forms from being in the military, being a teacher, adopting a homeless student and being a coach. As a high school football coach, I was an appointed "leader"; however, I took the position seriously. I used my job to mold young men beyond the football field. I was the head football coach on a Native American reservation. The group of men I oversaw coaching did not perform well on the field or in the classroom. I checked grades weekly, and we as a team ran fifty yards for every D on the team and hundred yards for every F. The running served a dual purpose allowing us to be in better condition as a team and being in better shape as a team allowed us to have more success on the field. The focus on grades led to our team having a grade point average over 3.0 while the players were in season, while the same group of young men saw their grades drop significantly after the season was over. My focus was to convince the young men that education was essential; and that once football was over, education would take them further. I succeeded in this for the two years I was the head coach there, and I am proud of the young men I coached. Outstanding leadership occurs when someone is honest and truthful with their followers and who lives the life they are preaching. While in my leadership role, I tried to live in a manner that would make my players proud. I also made the time to learn and value my player's culture. I respected their culture and worked our schedule around their needs. Respecting their culture allowed me to gain respect from the community. Being a leader is crucial because it is the best way to mold our future generations. I have two daughters, and I want the world to improve so that they may live a better and easier life than I had. Being a leader and doing my part to teach and coach our youth, I feel that is the best way to affect the future.

Healthcare was not my first career choice. My first was an educator because I thought that educating the youth was the best way I could help the underserved. While working with the underserved I realized that many simply cannot be educated when their basic needs were not met including healthcare. I chose to be a family practice physician assistant to provide basic healthcare needs to the most isolated populations I have come across. Native American living on the reservation and homeless populations are two groups of people that I have identified that I will work with in the future. These two populations normally do not receive proper and consistent primary care. I plan to fill this void by developing or joining a mobile unit that seeks them and provides care where they are. While applying for physician assistant schools I noticed many barriers to entry for myself due to my economic background. I grew up poor with a single mom raising four children. I joined the military to pay for me undergraduate degree. Many of the hurdles I faced were economic in nature and obviously still are because I am writing this essay. Applying to medical professional schools costs a lot of money. Money that people such as myself simply cannot afford. The total cost of meeting the criteria to even apply to physician assistant school are listed below: 1) Bachelors degree - $40,000 (just tuition) 2) EMT certificate - $4,000 3) Applications - $4,000 4) Travel for interviews - $2,000 5) Tests (GRE, CASPER, PCAT, etc) $1,000 I have learned that the physician assistant profession is over 70% white predominantly due to economics and specifically economic disadvantages that people coming from a low SES status face. The numbers above show the minimum amount I have spent to this point and do not include housing and other basic needs. I have been accepted and yet I am stressed that I may not even be able to attend due to economics. My school will cost $60,000 a year just in tuition. I can get $20,000 a year in federal loans, and I will be using my teacher retirement ($30,000) to help fund our basic needs. I have two children and a wife. Our income will be $54,000 dollars a year. Take home pay will be $3,000 dollars a month. Rent and daycare will cost our whole take home pay and we will receive zero help because $54,000 is too much to get assistance. Here I am one of four males accepted into the program and the only Hispanic, yet I am scared that I will not be able to economically provide for our family while I am in school. If I receive funding and decide to continue, I plan to develop a foundation. Within this foundation if I can get 10% of PA’s to contribute just 1% of their annual salary to the foundation, we will raise over $14,000,000 to fund things like application fees, test fees, travel for interviews, healthcare certificate programs and also scholarships to minimize these barriers of entry. In the next 10 years I plan to fulfill the things I have mentioned above while possibly expanding on my practice by developing or working with a company to deliver pharmaceuticals to the underserved populations I will be working with.

"Be a Father." Be a father is my only goal in life but that entails many different things. I hope that through my life and the interactions I have with others it encourages others to "be a father" as well. I've been privileged enough to understand the game of football and coach it well. This has provided me an avenue to connect with young men that may not have a good male role model in their life. Through my own personal constant pursuit of education, I hope that they see that learning is important and can help them get far in life. In addition to my ability to interact with the youth I also plan to work with geographically isolated populations on Native American reservations and/or homeless populations in our cities. Working as a family practice physician assistant will allow me the time to work and continue to coach the youth of my community. Being actively involved in trying to make our world a better place is the beginning of my “why.” I have two young daughters who are my “why.” I try my best to live a moral and ethical life so that my daughter’s may inherit a better world than I did. When am I old an lying on my death bed I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror with an honest self-evaluation and know that I tried my best to better the world while I was here. I am but one person but through the multiple avenues I have I can reach many. Through working with underserved populations as a physician assistant and coaching young people after work I hope that some of my personality rubs off. It is my hope that through my interactions while showing kindness and humility I may reach many others to do the same. The future begins now, and through my ability to coach our youth presently I hope that I can mold some of them to grow up and “be a father” to their communities just as I have tried for mine.

When I was a senior in high school my older bother committed suicide at the age of 20. My younger brother has also been diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic. My younger bother has attempted suicide many times as well. These two events have made my personality very stabile coincidentally. Going through this trauma early in my life and subsequently worrying that every phone call from my mother will be bad news has hardened me. This has not always been favorable when it comes to relationships. It is hard for me to relate to someone going through something that I personally feel is a "minor issue." The fact that I personally have dealt with so much adversity in my life and achieved as much as I have has made me less empathetic to others struggles at times when I feel that the struggle is not a large one. In the same manner it has made me less emotional I suppose. I do not get very excited while at the same time do not get very sad. When me and my wife started dating I remember her telling me "you have to show more emotion." I do not recall me being this was my whole life and I cannot help but wonder if somehow my past has shaped me this way. This same lack of empathy to "lesser" struggles has allowed me to focus on larger ones. I now understand how many of the smaller struggles can lead to much more significant ones like mental health, homelessness, and substance abuse. While working at my local homeless shelter/sobering I was able to see all stages of progression. Some at the shelter had just lost their job and did not appear to have a large substance abuse problem. As time progressed the situation became more permanent some turned to these avenues to mask the sadness or cope. Progressively, some felt their situation to be so dire that depression and other mental health problems ensued. My future goal is to have a mobile clinic that I work from that provides primary care to geographically isolated parts of the Navajo Nation or within a city working with homeless populations. I should have know that both brothers substance abuse from alcohol and marijuana may have been contributing factors to their overall mental health deterioration. By providing primary care I hope that I can catch some of these issues early among the these underserved populations and provide care as needed. In addition to my future practice I plan to coach high school football to be active among the youth in my community to combat our growing mental health problem among that population as well.

Below is something I wrote about a young man I coached that was taken too soon. He is one of the young men in my profile picture. He died suddenly only a year after graduate from substance abuse problems, much of which we were able to control because he loved football so much. Once his playing days were over the demons came back. Some might say that football creates demons. Most have probably seen the movie Concussion with the former NFL player driving into oncoming traffic in a manic episode because of his CTE. I will argue that football can also keep demons at bay. Many who knew Jamal knew he had some demons but when he stepped foot on that field all of them subsided. The demons had been sidelined at least temporarily as if the field of play was his holy place. I would even add that the demons themselves also enjoyed watching him play. They may even have been able to see a little bit of themselves in him with how fearless and aggressive he played the game. But when that last whistle blew and he stepped past those white lines for the last time there was no more football to keep them occupied. Jamal and football are synonymous with each other and forever will be. Now he has a different audience of angels able to admire his games and every time I hear thunder from above I will smile and think hmm it must be Jamal making a thundering tackle or lowering the shoulder and trucking through a defender as he crosses for the touchdown. You will be missed young man. Thank you for allowing me the privilege to have been in your life.