Reprinted from Feb. 1, 2004, edition of The Augusta Chronicle.

By Scott Michaux

Staff Writer

Go to any Super Bowl and talk to enough players about their lives, and you'll inevitably hear the escape story.

You know the one. Young boy grows up in depressed part of community. He's heading for trouble, finds football, evades pitfalls, gets noticed, goes to college, excels athletically, gets drafted, makes money, lives happily ever after.

Deon Grant tells that story. The Carolina Panthers safety escaped the South Augusta avenues and the stereotypical life afforded to its inhabitants.

But Grant's story has a twist. Unlike many escapees, Grant comes back to the southside whenever he can. After all, what good is his escape if he can't share it with those he left behind?

"I go back every other week. I have to," Grant said. "I feel like God blessed me to branch out to those kids. When I grew up I didn't know that. I never thought I'd be in this position."

This position is the NFL, where stars are afforded luxuries most folks back home on 1st Avenue don't even bother dreaming about. When Grant goes to work, he doesn't forget where he came from.

"Every time I have the opportunity to wake up and come over here (to the stadium) I feel like it's a blessing and another opportunity to go out there and show a lot of kids that can't make it to this point that I did it," he said. "I'm always smiling because where I came from a lot of guys can't sit here and tell the same stories I'm telling."

The young men and kids hanging out among the bi-level brick apartments where Grant grew up certainly notice.

"He comes back here all the time. He be shining," said Recardo Miller, 21, sitting with friends on his porch about a football field from Grant's 2027 1st Ave. childhood home. "Showing love to the 'hood. He's doing big things for Augusta."

THE TIE THAT BINDS

As Grant prepares for Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII against the New England Patriots, he doesn't take his good fortune for granted. The figurative road to Houston was too tough to not think about where it started. He can check off the steps where his roots served him well.

When your draft status slips because folks question your toughness, think of southside Augusta.

When a fractured hip threatens to end your career before it starts, think of southside.

When your coach yanks you from a game because you're not meeting potential, think of southside.

When you hear over and over that you're part of the weakest link in the defense, think of southside.

When you're branded the underdog in the biggest freakin' football game on the face of the earth, think of southside.

"Everything I do I just think about southside and I excel on every level," Grant said.

Grant and southside Augusta are inexorably linked - and that's fine with him. Not that he ever wants to move back to his childhood home or that he hasn't offered to move his grandmother, Ruthie May Wright-Daniels, from her Leonard Drive home. A part of southside stays with Grant forever, and he embraces it.

He understood that bond when he was lying in a hospital bed in 1999 with a broken hip and wondering whether he'd ever play football again.

"My mom told me to put everything I do in the mind-set I had when I was in the southside projects," Grant said. "She say when you was out there you was dodging a lot of things and there were a lot of negative things coming my way. I was dodging them and I was focused and she said it was time for me to get back focused now."

Grant didn't have a lot of positive role models in his neighborhood. When he envied folks with nice cars and fancy jewelry, he knew how they acquired the means.

"I wanted to be like the big-time drug dealers," Grant admits. "They had all the money. They had it going on. We didn't have no professional athletes. We didn't have no guys going to college from my area. (Dealers) were my role models. That's all we knew. But through the grace of God, He branched me in another direction."

Grant said he got in his share of trouble as a kid, but he never crossed the line. He had family members caught up in drugs, but his mother and grandmother kept him "straight and strong." He saw people get killed. He watched others "get stomped nearly every day." The closer he got to trouble, the more committed he became to steer away.

"Just like touching and I got burnt by a stove," he said. "I put my hand on it and got burned and said it was not for me. I never really had to pick up the guns or pick up the drugs and sell it. It was a hand-to-hand situation with me and I chose to just turn around. I got in more trouble with God for having it in my mind and wanting to do that."

MESSAGE SENT

For that reason Grant feels compelled to return to the southside regularly.

"He's known for throwing crunk parties," said Chris Walker, 18. "Everybody in the CSRA be there."

Most of all, Grant just hangs out with kids on the streets - a living example of a better way to achieve high goals.

"I go back now because I'm the only one from that project that made it," he said. "So I know a lot of kids are still seeing them drug dealers and I'm trying to pull them away from that. Show them that you can wear all this jewelry, drive the nice cars and take care of your family doing another thing rather than go out there trying to get that fast money."

With little options but trouble or sports growing up, Grant took to sports. He was a natural, strong and fast and gifted. He was the nation's top defensive back recruit when he went to Tennessee. After tying an NCAA record with 11 interceptions as a junior, he left early for the NFL and was a second-round pick by the Panthers. He's started every pro game he's ever played in.

Football might seem like a shallow message to deliver, but in Grant's world his football success goes a long way. He believes what he and his teammates did by winning a state championship at Josey High School carries as much gravity as what he and the Panthers are doing right now.

"What I did at Josey put myself in position where I can go back there and talk to a lot of cats that's knuckleheads that don't believe in themselves and show them you got to have belief," he said. "My word is that much stronger to those guys because I did it. I won the state. I've been an All-American. I can say that without bragging. It speaks for itself, so all I have to do is go out there and mingle with the guys and their ears and their eyes are open to me."

Grant's credibility is never questioned. He rolls up in his Lexus SUV - "his big boy toy" as Miller calls it - and flashes his indomitable smile and everyone is quick to welcome him home.

"My main focus when I go home to Augusta is to see the people out there that don't see the things that I see," he said. "I go to the projects. I go wherever they're at. If they're on 1st Avenue chillin', I go to 1st Avenue. They have enough respect that if they are doing negative things, they'll put it to the side not to jeopardize my life."

Grant doesn't have to say much to deliver his message to the kids.

"I don't go home and preach to them. They don't want to hear that," he said. "I just go and show my face and they know that DG is doing something positive, and look how he's living. He's living better than anybody in the project right now. There's a lot of guys from our project that are in college now. That went to college to play basketball and football. So I can feel that I'm really reaching out and catching a few guys."

His message certainly seeps in.

"It's good to see a homeboy doing good things instead of the usual things," Miller said. "It's rough around here. It ain't hard to do (the wrong thing). He's a real good example. Shows what you can do when you put your mind to it."