JaJuan Cherry finds family through faith and football

“Get me out or I’ll be dead by the time I’m 16.”

That’s what 13-year-old JaJuan Cherry told his Guardian Ad Litem after walking more than 2 hours to her office.

The events of the previous 24 hours provided all the confirmation necessary for JaJuan to know he needed a drastic change.

One of his brothers had been shot nine times by rival gang members. Another brother was arrested that night while attempting to retaliate.

The next morning, JaJuan got dressed, left his .38 caliber handgun at home and made his plea.

Two pictures on the wall

JaJuan told TCPalm his story on the back porch of Dylan and Dana Tedders’ home in Okeechobee.

Dylan Tedders is the principal at Okeechobee High School, where JaJuan is a star football player. Now 19, he is days away from officially signing to play football with the University of South Florida. 

Dana Tedders is a teacher at Yearling Middle School in Okeechobee.

But those aren’t the titles JaJuan uses or the way he sees the Tedders.

He simply refers to them as Dad and Mom. They call him their son. It’s been that way since the Tedders became JaJuan's permanent guardians in 2014.

Visitors to the Tedders’ home are greeted by a pale blue wall with the word “Family” stenciled on it and five large pictures. One is of Dylan and Dana on vacation. Their biological sons, Dalton and Deven, each have a photo on the wall.

JaJuan has two.

Everything about this life is different from the one he left behind.

Rough start

The way JaJuan remembers it, his childhood went sideways once his mom got into drugs and alcohol when he was in second grade.

“She basically gave up on life,” JaJuan said. “She started doing drugs and life went downhill.”

He primarily grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in West Palm Beach that, at any time, had as many as nine people living in it. Both JaJuan and his older half-sister, LaPorshe Morris, said the apartment was roach-infested and had urine from family pets on the floor.

His three older brothers had gang affiliations, as did his mom’s boyfriend, known as “Peanut.”

Drugs and guns were something JaJuan quickly got accustomed to.

“Sometimes people would snort cocaine in front of you,” he said. “It was natural to see those things. It was nothing you had never seen before.”

JaJuan didn’t want to be in a gang like his brothers. It didn’t fit his personality. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t influenced by the life.

When JaJuan was in third grade, he started smoking marijuana. That also is when he started carrying a gun.

“I never shot at anybody, but I kept it for protection,” he said.

JaJuan never pulled the trigger, but he said he wasn't afraid to.

“You have to pull,” he said. “You’re not just going to sit there and watch someone pull on you. Of course you’re going to pull and hold it down. You’re taught at a young age and it’s ingrained in your mind to protect yourself. I was never a troublemaker. I was never like my brothers. I was the one out washing cars. I was the one that was out helping old people. I was the one out there doing what I had to do.”

JaJuan admitted he did things in elementary school that should have landed him in juvenile detention. He just never got caught. By the time he was 11, he was selling marijuana and crack cocaine.

“It’s what you’re used to,” JaJuan said. “Living in that type of situation, that type of poverty, you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s the only thing you know. I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t know about a family. I didn’t know about actually loving someone.”

Is that a cow?

The first time JaJuan was placed in foster care in Okeechobee, he thought it wouldn’t be too much of a change. It wasn’t until he saw his first cow — an encounter that prompted him to blurt out a curse word — that he realized he was being taken to a different city, not Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach.

JaJuan and his two sisters were removed from his mother’s apartment when he was in fourth grade and taken to Real Life Children’s Ranch in Okeechobee.

It was a culture shock for JaJuan, who was placed in a home with Paul and Peggy Vedder.

“For the first time I had a bed, socks, clothes, food,” JaJuan said. “I knew I was going to wake up in the morning with no one wanting to hurt me because of my brothers. They poured great knowledge into my life.”

JaJuan still struggled with anger and occasionally got into fights at school, which is why he met Chris Branham shortly after arriving at Osceola Middle School in sixth grade.

The next Lonnie Pryor

At the time, Branham was the dean and athletic director at Osceola Middle. His previous job was head football coach at Okeechobee High School, where he led the team to back-to-back playoff berths in 2007 and 2008. The star player on those teams was running back Lonnie Pryor, who eventually played four seasons at Florida State, was the 2012 Orange Bowl MVP and spent time on three NFL practice squads.

From the time he left Okeechobee, Pryor became the benchmark to which future players were compared.

More:Cherry cements legacy as one of Okeechobee's best football players

Branham doesn’t remember that first meeting with JaJuan to talk about his behavior. But Branham recalls hearing about a middle school running back who was the next Pryor.

JaJuan had never played organized football before arriving at the Ranch. His mother felt it was a waste of time and money and wouldn’t sign the permission slip when he lived in West Palm Beach. To this day, JaJuan's mother has never seen her youngest son play football.

It didn’t take long for JaJuan to show he was a natural on the gridiron. He scored five touchdowns in his first game.

“The first time I watched JaJuan play, he got a toss play,” Branham said. “The defensive end comes too far up, he moves back to the ball, gets back into his running lane and houses the ball as natural as anything. I thought this kid is just natural. At this age they don’t normally do those things.”

JaJuan and Branham’s bond grew from there — and continued even when JaJuan returned to his mother’s home toward the end of his sixth-grade year in 2012.

'Shaking with fear'

His first night back couldn’t have been more different from a night at the Ranch.

“All my friends were in gangs, had tattoos,” JaJuan said. “I come back, they had a great party for me and my boys were like, ‘Hey, let’s go out and have a good time.’ Of course, me, I have on a shirt that says, ‘The Christian walk never stops’ with a cross on the back. They’re wearing all black.

“We're walking down the street, chilling, (and) my friend pulled a gun and started shooting at a guy who was walking past us. Some dude who was talking trash about him. He just pulled it out and started shooting at him. Me, I take off running. Those same guys 5 minutes later came back and tried to kill all of us. You see that, and I’m shaking with fear. This isn’t what I came back here for.”

JaJuan was with three friends that first night back. He said he’s the only one still alive.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for JaJuan to get back into the life he had been so relieved to leave behind.

“Maybe three weeks,” he said. “Mom started doing drugs again, brothers already gang related. Guess what I do? I follow the young men and the guys who were role models, everybody who thought they were popular and everything. Of course, I start doing it. I stopped going to school. Guess what I’m doing? I’m selling weed now.

“In that situation you feel like God can’t help you. … Like it’s too late.”

Once, after a friend was shot and JaJuan was chased by gang members at a McDonald’s, JaJuan called Branham and asked him for help. When Branham arrived at Cherry’s apartment complex, it reminded him of a scene from the movie “Training Day.”

“I’m not a person that gets uncomfortable just about anywhere,” Branham said. “I’ve been in some pretty tough neighborhoods, so things like that don’t bother me. Pulling in to come get him and knowing the backstory of what he had been through, I was slightly intimidated. It was one way in, one way out and you didn’t know what you were going to get into.”

The breaking point 

Things reached the tipping point on June 22, 2012.

JaJuan heard the unmistakable pops of gunfire and raced outside to find his brother, Jeffrey Cherry, lying on the concrete in a pool of his own blood. Jeffrey had been shot nine times — four times in the chest and five times in the legs.

“I’ll never forget it. After the dudes (shot) him, you could see the people running away, all black ski masks, stuff and everything,” JaJuan said. “All you see is your brother yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’ But there’s no way I can help him.”

JaJuan froze as he watched his brother writhing in pain. Someone else in the neighborhood called 9-1-1. Jeffrey was taken to St. Mary’s Medical Center and lived.

Timothy Morris, less than a year younger than Jeffrey, decided to get revenge for his half-brother’s shooting.

“My brother took all the guns we had and went to retaliate and then they end up going to jail because they got pulled over by the police,” JaJuan said. “They were really going to retaliate that night. I’m never going to forget it.”

According to the probable cause affidavit, Morris was one of several males outside a West Palm Beach apartment with a weapon. After seeing a police car, Morris and Tarvaris Davis ran “with hands in their waistbands.” Police found Morris and Davis hiding in a nearby apartment and discovered two hand guns.

Morris, who had been arrested on gun charges a month earlier, was found guilty of felony gun charges.

JaJuan did a quick assessment of his life that night.

His oldest brother, Brandon Cherry, already was in prison for several crimes, including grand theft of a motor vehicle. Morris was in jail. Jeffrey was in the hospital, fighting for his life.

“I just told myself I can’t do this no more,” JaJuan said. “What’s going through my mind? ‘JaJuan, you got to leave because you’re next.’"

Back to Okeechobee

Branham still remembers getting the call from Kelly P. Moore-Bertisch, JaJuan's Guardian Ad Litem, to inform him Cherry had run away from home.

“It was about 7:30 in the morning,” Branham said. “She told me, ‘Most kids run to a family member or a friend. JaJuan ran to me, his child advocate. He told her, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. If you don’t get me away, I’ll be dead by the time I’m 16 years old. I want to go back to Okeechobee, and you’ve got to make it happen.'”

JaJuan already had been in contact with Moore-Bertisch about returning to Okeechobee.

Jeffrey's shooting and Morris’ arrest accelerated JaJuan's exit strategy. For a kid who already made so many decisions based solely on survival, this was the biggest.

JaJuan grabbed the business card Moore-Bertisch had given him and he left the apartment, believing he never would see it again. He just started walking toward Moore-Bertisch’s office and decided he wouldn’t stop for anything or anyone.

“I was determined that this was what I had to do,” JaJuan said. “I wasn’t fearful. Nothing was going to stop me. I left my gun at the house. I knew that was going to be my last time there."

JaJuan had a plan in mind and relayed that to Moore-Bertisch. He needed to get back to Okeechobee where he was going to live with Branham and his wife, Michelle.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Branhams were open to the idea.

“We just fell in love with JaJuan and his personality,” Chris Branham said.

Change of plans

A few days after begging Moore-Bertisch to help him, JaJuan was back at the Ranch in Okeechobee. Then the Branhams began the process to become his legal guardians.

“His mother did not want to give up custody, but she knew he was happy in Okeechobee,” Chris Branham said. “She was willing to do a guardian release. So we started doing all the paperwork and background checks and supervised visits.”

By Thanksgiving, JaJuan was spending more time with the Branhams. It seemed like a perfect fit until a wrench was thrown into their plans.

Actually, it was more like three of them. Michelle Branham was pregnant with triplets.

Suddenly, the Branhams were faced with a situation where they wouldn’t potentially be adding two people to the family — JaJuan and a baby — but four.

“Hearing we were going to have triplets was a little overwhelming,” Chris Branham said. “And with the size of our home and financially, we were going to put him right back in the same situation he was in before (in West Palm Beach), and it wasn’t going to work out.”

Branham broke into tears when he told JaJuan, someone he said he loves like his own son, that he couldn’t become his legal guardian. The seventh grader handled the news well.

“I never took it as disappointing,” JaJuan said. “I was never that kid.”

Fortunately for JaJuan, the Branhams weren't his only option. Another family was ready to step up. 

A fresh start

The joke between Dylan and Dana Tedders is that they would need a hotel for all the kids she has wanted to help over the years.

“I think I’m just always so emotionally tied to a lot of my kids from many different backgrounds that it's always been a soft spot in my heart,” she said. “It just never came to fruition.”

The couple considered being foster parents, but Dana Tedders was too concerned she would fall in love with the children only to watch them leave.

For whatever reason, something was different when she heard about JaJuan’s situation.

“I just happened to be walking out of work one day and passed an office where I heard them talking about him and, whether the story was true or not, he was needing guardianship and if that did not happen they would need to find alternative placement,” she said. “And I just said, ‘Oooh, time out.’ It went pretty quickly after that.”

Dylan Tedders was open to the idea, even though he'd never met JaJuan.

“He’s got to be driven, got to have some goals,” Tedders said. “And in talking to Chris, just the fact that JaJuan got out Palm Beach County, out of the situation he was in and knew he had to get out, that to me, told me (enough) already.”

The Tedders started going through the process of becoming legal guardians. They had the opportunity to read through JaJuan's file, but declined.

“Maybe it was naïve of me, but even when we were able to read his file I chose not to because I just felt like it needs to be a fresh start and I need to get to know him not based on before, but based on now,” Dana Tedders said.

The more time JaJuan spent with them, the less time he wanted to spend at the Ranch.

During eighth grade, the Tedders became JaJuan's legal guardians.

'I see love'

From the Tedders’ perspective, having JaJuan in their home was a relatively easy transition.

“It was a blessing because it’s been pretty seamless,” Dana Tedders said. “Truly it has. Anything we’ve had to deal with has been minor. It just doesn’t even touch what (some) kids are involved with.”

It was different for JaJuan. For the first time, he had a male role model in the house. Dana Tedders remembers after JaJuan first moved in that he would sit in the living room talking with Dylan Tedders for hours.

JaJuan only met his biological father once, outside a corner store when he was in second grade. They agreed to speak on the phone but during that phone call, JaJuan's father told him he didn't want anything to do with him. 

Now, JaJuan had people who not only wanted to claim him, but wanted the best for him. Now, he had rules and expectations he had to follow.

“It’s their home,” JaJuan said. “I had to adapt and learn. I didn’t know what it was like to be in a family. I didn’t realize you would come home to people who cared about you every night.”

What has never been an issue in the house? Race.

Dylan Tedders worried that some people might treat JaJuan differently, but it hasn’t happened.

JaJuan doesn’t care about skin color.

“I don’t see any of that. I see love," he said. "I see people who gave me a home when I needed one, and I see people who are going to love me no matter what. At the end of the day, they’re your parents and you know they want the best for you and are going to support you no matter what. Knowing that, when you go in this house, even when I go to USF, I know my home is still here. I know I can come back to my parents.”

Changed life

An outsider looking at JaJuan's circumstances now as opposed to what they were six years ago might think the Tedders saved his life.

In some ways, that’s accurate. In addition to having his daily needs met by a family that loves him, JaJuan has earned a college scholarship and was voted by his peers Mr. OHS — considered one of the highest honors at Okeechobee High School.

But to say the benefits are one-sided doesn’t paint a complete picture.

“It seems like one night we just said, ‘Ok, we're going to bring a kid in, we have a room, let’s go.’ But I think he’s impacted us as much as we’ve impacted him,” Dylan Tedders said. “My former baseball coach from my junior college said, ‘Man, you’ve changed that boy's life' and I say, ‘Yeah, but he’s changed ours too.’ He sees the world from a totally different perspective. He appreciates things that we take for granted.”

JaJuan says a prayer of gratitude every day when he looks in the mirror. He can feel the high walls he built for self-preservation early in his life starting to crumble.

“I can be myself,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about being that hard JaJuan. I always had to protect myself. (Now,) I can be who my faith really calls me to be. I let my guard down.

“I was a life-taker. Now, I’m a life-giver.”

Lucas Daprile contributed to this report. Photos and videos by Jeremiah Wilson.