I decided to make a better life for myself.

At the age of, say, 17, I decided to

make a better life for myself,
because in the inner city,

drugs and gangs are the
only things that people,

those are the only things
that I saw people doing

after high school, and I wasn't
the best student in school,

I went to summer school all
four years of high school.

I was really good at playing football,

but college was not an option
for me, both financially,

and I just didn't have
the grades to do it.

So I had a long, hard
talk with myself one day,

and asked, "How are you
gonna get out of Rochester?

You don't wanna go and be in a gang,

you don't wanna be a drug
dealer, what's your way out?"

And for me, it was the Army.