Every Day Is a Triumph For Redskins' Brown

"Tolbert saved me, man," Brown said. "That's my main man. He went and got me off the streets. He literally went and got me off the streets and would wake me up and take me to MacArthur to meet with the principal to see what I had to do to get back in school."

Bain, Boykins and Wright would shuttle Brown to meetings, and he began taking summer classes and making up for missed assignments. Eventually, he was released from MacArthur and Central admitted him in 1996. "We put our necks out there by the mere fact that we took him knowing of his baggage as far as his juvenile record," Boykins said. "But that kid's attitude was always positive. He never got into any trouble at our school and he just had a drive to do better and better."

On the day Brown officially withdrew from MacArthur, Boykins promised his mother that if her son was ready to change his life, he would work with him as long as it took to graduate. Brown ended up as a star on the field -- with Coffey lifting his team rule against dreadlocks and fans nicknaming Brown "Deuce," and screaming for him at home games -- but neglected his classwork. He skipped school most days after football season ended.

By the time Brown returned to Central in the fall, however, he had changed.

'Murdered for . . . Shoes'

On July 4, 1997, Brown went looking for his younger brother Carlos, 14, fearing the worst at 3 a.m. He found him and a friend yards from their building, dead in the street, left there shoeless, but with their socks clean.

"I was still not totally turned around, then before my senior year I found my little brother," Brown said, tears forming in his eyes. "I hate to say it, but he was murdered for a pair of shoes, and I don't think nothing can get no worse than that. I actually found my brother -- not a step-brother, my brother -- who, when I got out of the bathwater, he got in that water, things like that. I think that was it right there when I saw that."

Coffey had a rule against family members hanging around the team, but Carlos had been a fixture at practices the season before. The entire team attended his funeral dressed in their jerseys, and Brown would later tell Moss that he wondered if that bullet was really meant for him as some kind of payback. He leaned on his mother during the tragedy, and had a large portrait of his brother tattooed over his heart.

"My mother helped me get through it because I look at her, and she's 5-3 and she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders," Brown said. "So I don't think about me in hard times; I just think about her and move on."

Brown's young cousin, Damon, was killed at a Burger King drive-thru that same year, and his mother, whom Brown said is shy and declined to comment for this story, was suffering from heart problems. She would require a second procedure to repair an artery.

Yet another blow came at Christmas, when Brown's sister was killed. She was 33 and left five children, ranging now from ages 9 to 21. They now live in Miami with Brown, his mother, and three of his children.

Brown had an outstanding senior season and was drawing interest from top football colleges, but most did not believe he could be academically eligible. He proved them wrong. During the 1997-98 school year, he managed to complete the equivalent of three years of school by taking additional classes during the day, at night and on Saturdays. He graduated on schedule in 1998.

"My senior year I just got so focused on school," Brown said. "I really appreciated the chance to learn. I saw the changes it was having on me, and I liked it."