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Homeless by choice, Roy Juarez speaker offers inspiration at career center
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
Roy Juarez Jr. ended up homeless at 14, a child of domestic violence.
At 31 he’s homeless again, this time by choice.
Juarez, who grew up in San Antonio, Texas, travels the country, talking to young people about his experiences. So far, he’s shared his story with about 95,000 people.
“Never give up, and never stop chasing your dreams,” he told students Friday at Choffin Career and Technical Center.
It’s a lesson he lives.
When Juarez was a teen, his mother left her abusive 20-year marriage to his father. His older sisters lived with their boyfriends, but Juarez, his mother and two younger siblings fled from place to place as his father found them.
His mother became involved with a police officer who asked her to live with him. There was only one catch: He didn’t want kids.
Juarez, his 9-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother were on the street. As he picked whatever of his possessions could fit into a small suitcase, Juarez composed two letters to be read at his funeral.
The one to his father talked about the pain the man inflicted upon his family and saying he forgave him.
The one to his mother was two pages, covered front and back with “I love you.”
His grandmother quickly took in his sister but didn’t have room for him and his little brother. His best friend’s aunt eventually took in the little boy.
That left Juarez to move from one place to another — friends, families, friends of friends. All of them seemed to want something from him.
One day he snuck into a hotel to eat and heard a speaker talking about her challenges growing up and how she became successful as an adult, and it resonated with him.
Finally, he offered to clean a neighborhood church if the pastor would allow him and his little brother to stay there. The pastor declined.
“She said, “You can live with me under one condition,’” Juarez said.
She wanted him to return to school.
Juarez returned to school, graduated and went to community college, where that same speaker gave a presentation. He followed in her footsteps, graduating from the same university she did.
After working for a short time, Juarez had a dream of walking into an arena filled with young people who were learning to fight injustice. He awoke and knew he had to go on tour to share his story and try to help people.
“I knew we had issues in this country, but I didn’t know how many issues and I saw so many in the first three months,” Juarez said.
He and his best friend, who quit his job to join the tour, travel from city to city, staying in their car, people’s homes, churches, wherever they can find lodging. Juarez doesn’t take a salary but uses some of the money from speaking engagements to repay his student loans. He has no grants or corporate sponsors.
His tour will conclude in May, and he hopes to launch a second one, although he’d like to secure a corporate sponsor for that one. He asks students who hear him to follow him on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/royjuarez.com, to help with that.
When the second tour concludes, Juarez wants to be an author and to become part of an international organization fighting injustice.
The speaker wants young people to continue to dream and to follow those dreams despite adversity.
“Never allow what you’ve seen or what you’ve been through to take away your future,” he said.
His message struck a chord with Choffin students.
“I thought he had a really good message,” said Megan Christ, 16, a junior from Chaney who is studying multimedia production.
She hopes it helps others who may be living in difficult circumstances.
East juniors Sidney Figinsky and Monyce Robinson, both 17, found the message inspirational.
“You never know what someone else is going through,” Monyce said.