TAMPA HEIGHTS - Some events in life can steal youthful dreams before they're rooted.
So it was for James Foster Jr., a month before his 12th birthday. His father, in seemingly perfect health, went into the hospital and died a few days later.
"After my pop died, I didn't care," said Foster, now 18. "I didn't really care about school or nothing."
Weekends with James' baseball and football games were suddenly empty. The two had been inseparable.
"His dad was the one who helped him with his homework, played ball with him and did most of the disciplining," said his mother, Tracy Foster.
Foster sank into a deep rut. During his freshman year at Bloomingdale High School, report cards of mostly F's frustrated his mother, a teacher at Tampa Bay Boulevard Elementary School.
"She was fed up with me," he said.
She knew he could do better. But he continued to struggle, and it looked like he wouldn't graduate.
"I knew what I was doing was wrong," Foster said. "I just didn't have motivation."
Then in his junior year his guidance counselor threw him a rope. She suggested D.W. Waters Career Center in Tampa Heights, designed to keep teens in school.
"My mama's like: This is my last chance to do something," Foster said.
He took it.
In small classrooms with individual attention, Foster thrived. He joined Crimewatch and the Student Advisory Council. He gathered canned goods for nearby Metropolitan Ministries and policed school halls.
"He bought into what we were doing here," said Windell Roberson, student interventions specialist at D.W. Waters.
Roberson saw Foster's commitment and nominated him for the turnaround award.
"He's on that path to stay," he said. "That's pretty much James."
Foster is set to graduate in December. He plans to go to Hillsborough Community College and then to a four-year college.
He'll take with him knowledge and experience.
During the school year, Foster helped out at Graham Elementary School on Tuesdays, through an internship and community service grant called ASPIRE from the Florida Department of Education's office of workforce education. He answered phones, made copies and doled out advice to children, sent to the office for bad behavior.
"It's not polite to be spitting," he told one student.
"You can't have people get to you," he told a third-grade girl who had been in a fight. "Just do what you've got to do in class."
At home near Brandon, he's a role model for his 8-year-old brother, Justin. He helps with homework and plays basketball with him. When Justin slips up, Foster tells him that if dad was alive, he would not approve.
He truly has turned his life around, his mother said.
"Sometimes when I hear other people talk about him, I go, James? My James?"
