His longtime friend and mentor, Rudolph Taylor, recalls a younger Anderson with a pigskin in his hands at all times. Anderson deflated a ball, stashed a small air pump in his backpack, then blew his prized possession back up as soon as the school day ended. He spends much of his downtime now making sure other kids from his hometown of Vallejo, Calif.
Those who attended, around kids from grade school up through high school, were introduced to a STEAM-based curriculum: science, technology, engineering, arts and math. This, all of it β the annual football camp, now in its fourth year, and the summer academy, in its infancy β is a beginning. He was raised by his mother and his grandmother, but under the same roof lived an uncle who used and sold drugs. Those success stories, though, are few and far between.
It can be done. Anderson is living proof. But he wants the kids of Vallejo to know that there are other paths. He came from an educated family, he spent days taking college visits and he was all set to attend Cal Poly, on scholarship, to study computer-aided design. Customary for everyone, though, was a community-service requirement to graduate high school. It also was there that Taylor had a life-changing epiphany: He wanted to teach. All the while he mentored and tutored the Anderson brothers.
Between and kids have shown up to C. At the end of the month-long curriculum, as a thank you to Sphero for providing those devices, Taylor asked his students to create a presentation using the robots. This is the crux of what Anderson wants to accomplish through his foundation: To provide the kids of Vallejo with experiences they otherwise would not have, be it through their schools or in day-to-day life.
He knows those shortcomings because he lived them firsthand. Welch was a two-sport star β baseball and football β at Franklin High School in Vallejo. Only toward the end of his athletics career did he fall in love with the camera. He now runs his own company, K. Welch Visuals. Anderson nearly was a Lion last year. A couple of weeks later, with Kerryon Johnson injured, the Lions hosted Anderson for a workout.
