About

Who I Am

I grew up in the San Diego projects: Section 8 housing, Woodglen, Mapleview. I was expelled from my first high school in 2004 and transferred to a second, better one, where trouble followed me anyway, enough suspensions and alternative-school placements that graduating at all wasn't a given. I graduated in 2007, the only person in my friend group who did. By twenty I was in the grip of addiction that had run through four generations of my family. On July 12, 2009, that ended. I have been sober 17 years.

Like my forefathers, I served in the U.S. Air Force, from 2007 to 2008, working Minuteman II ICBM systems, one of the hardest non-cryptography jobs in the service. My time in uniform ended with a general discharge under honorable conditions after a suicide attempt at 130 miles per hour. I carry PTSD and two traumatic brain injuries. I do not hide either.

I rebuilt from there. Grossmont College: a 3.97 GPA and commencement speaker. I wrote the speech before the school had even chosen me to give it, certain they would. I told people I was getting into Stanford before I had the acceptance letter in hand, and I was right. I was one of 30 transfer students admitted out of 1,200 applicants, the only one from my part of the world and the only transfer student in the cohort who also lived off campus. Only two of us in that cohort graduated in two years with honors; the other is now a Supreme Court counselor with a Harvard JD. We were also the only undergraduates in that cohort with children: two each. The dean of financial aid told me I was the most expensive undergraduate student on their books: a full academic scholarship covering tuition, a job in the neuroscience lab to cover living costs, and a $6,000 grant funding my honors thesis research during the one summer I spent at Stanford. Departmental Honors in Psychology, 3.82, published research in the Decision Neuroscience Lab. After graduating, I became Resident Manager at Genesis Recovery, living in an RV or on the grounds with the residents during that time. I became a self-taught software engineer, spending seven years at Wickfire before rising to Head of Engineering at CloseHack, an enterprise company.

I became fluent in American Sign Language before my son was born Deaf, and moved my entire family to St. Augustine, Florida for the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, the largest school for Deaf children in America. Federal data analysis I conducted myself informed that decision. I am the only candidate in this race who speaks ASL at a native level.

I run AA meetings and volunteer weekly in the gang and murder unit of a Florida jail. My own story with the system is in Thrown. I am a father of seven. I fought my own VA disability claim, and as of October 2026 I am rated 70% service-connected. I believed in marriage and failed at it once, and I say so without excuses.

None of this is theory. Every position I hold, I have lived first. I am running for President of the United States.