One student cared for her mother as she battled breast cancer.
Another overcame a poverty-stricken upbringing. Two others endured the death of a parent, including one who witnessed her stepfather killing her mother.
All 10 of the high school seniors recognized by the 2018 Moffitt Healthy KIDZ Role Model program offered stories of perseverance, community care and faithful families. They'll begin their higher education pursuits with a 7,000 on a tiny Bonita Springs restaurant spot that he planned to turn into a seafood success.
"Great," said his wife Kathleen with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
What else could she say? Doctors had diagnosed her husband with metastasized prostate cancer and given him two months to two years on this earth. It hardly seemed like the right time to delve into a business venture.
"It didn't make me very happy," Kathleen said.
Tony, however, was a lost soul. On a long walk after the diagnosis, beleaguered and worried, he turned his life over to God. And God told him to get back into the restaurant business - a business he had promised Kathleen he would give up.
After all, they once owned four Irish pubs in Wichita Falls, Texas, and lost them all after the town's oil industry went into a downward spiral.
Still, when Tony's brother gave him 50 from Grant for petty cash.
Even after the opening, they hit bumps. Back in Texas, they didn't steam crabs, they boiled them. So that's what the Phelans did - in a candy cooker outside behind the restaurant. They averaged about 10,000 donation, but it honored 8,500 first responders in the 13 counties where it has restaurants with 210,000.
Even more impressive, it gave every public school teacher in the same 13 counties a 1.2 million value.
They're answering the call, because someone answered the call for them.
"There were a lot of prayers, even way before he got cancer," Grant says. "There were a lot of challenges when we first got here, but they all got answered. You pinch yourself everyday."
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As for Tony's cancer, he took a holistic approach to treatment with a traditional doctor and an untrained man who believed healing could come.
He also received a second opinion from the doctors at the Moffitt Cancer Center, and never forgot the care they showed him.
In the end, his doctor said he still has cancer, but it's dormant. It's asleep within him, no longer adversely impacting his health.
"I thank God every morning," Tony said.
And how could such a medical miracle occur?
"He's at this stage because he started to love again," Kathleen said. "The work helped him. Instead of taking away from his care, it fueled his passion for life."
Family, faith, passion. The dreams of a father, the persistence of a mother, the love of two sons all proved to be a winning formula.
And it's a formula that can serve the Moffitt Healthy KIDZ winners as they move on to college. Really, it's a formula that can serve us all.
That's all I'm saying.