Dexter Harris is still not entirely comfortable talking about what happened, about what landed him, just a few months shy of his high school graduation, in front of an Alameda County Juvenile Court judge.
"I don't want to go into too much details," Dexter, now 22, says,"but I was running with the wrong crowd of guys."
Dexter, a football standout for Fremont's American High School, had dreams of playing in college, or even beyond. His dream is now a much different one. Dexter now has his heart set on a career as a firefighter.
"It's just like my dream job," Dexter says. "I'd rather be a firefighter than a football player."
What made the difference?
Dexter says it was when that judge sent him to Camp Wilmot Sweeney, instead of prison.
Camp Sweeney is a minimum security facility run by the Alameda County Probation Department along with the county's Department of Education. While serving their time, inmates, like Dexter, continue to work on their education; some graduating high school while at Camp Sweeney, others catching up to the point they rejoin classes at their old schools.
Local
Dexter spent 9 months at Camp Sweeney. He says he showed up with a bad attitude, thinking that teachers and staff were the "bad guys." Meeting teachers like Nicole Crosby, though, quickly changed his mind.
"She really does care," Dexter says. "She showed me that I can trust teachers and staff members."
"Dexter wasn't too tough to crack," Nicole says, "though he probably thinks he was," she adds with a smile.
Dexter says it was his first experience in life with adults who, not only cared about him, but were in a position to act on it. He says there was so much turmoil in his family while growing up, his parents had little time, or energy, to focus on him.
Camp Sweeney is also where Dexter began his path toward becoming a firefighter. He now works as an EMT and just started classes at Livermore's Las Positas college to become a paramedic, classes he was only able to pay for thanks to a scholarship arranged by Nicole.
"I just look at it as an investment in the young man," Nicole says. "I'm just hopeful that it pays dividends for the community."
"I feel really grateful," Dexter says. He says having Nicole be there to see him, one day, getting a fire department badge on him, "will me my way to say thanks to her."
