Gregory Pereira

I hit bottom, and it turned some stuff around for me, and I ended up even going back to school.

I ended up with two different degrees.

And with that, I taught gang awareness and prevention, substance abuse prevention, HIV prevention.

And I was transformed, but didn't have that sense of family.

I had some stuff, but not family.

But in my office one day, there was this girl who came in, and she was smiling, she was beaming, she lit up a room.

When she came, that smile was there.

When she was leaving, my head bobbed left and right with her.

She used to come into my office to borrow a stapler and tape and folders, and I would see her walk out, and I could look at her desk, and she had a stapler, tape, and folders.

So from our talking, we got to walk and she was very athletic and she used to love to walk.

So I used to walk her home or close to home.

So we started walking for about two, three weeks.

We were walking and she would always tell me after about two miles, okay, I'm going to leave you here.

And I was like, maybe she's doing me the favor.

You know, she has a lot more to go.

But after two more times like this,

I got very curious, you know, like, why isn't she allowing me to walk her home?

Well, the following day, we must have had this psychic connection.

It was the heart of February.

It was freezing out.