For a typical teenager, a car usually represents freedom, but 19-year-old Jherlymax "Max" Jones says his first car literally had to be everything.
"That car was my best friend. For me it represents adulthood,” the high school senior from Virginia said. “That Acura was like my first, first official car that I got my license with."
For several months, Max says he would spend his days attending school, working at a local restaurant, and then eating, sleeping and ultimately living out of his car, going as far as running the car for heat during the winter so he could stay warm.
"It was just long, long months of me just not having anywhere to go," he said. "I want people to know that there are people like me in the world. I went through a lot."
Max said his vehicle wound up being his last resort for shelter in part because of a chaotic upbringing. Max was raised in Wilson, North Carolina, where he lived with his mom and half siblings. He told the Scripps News Group that money was hard to come by and stable housing was even tougher.
"She did work a lot when we were growing up, an extreme amount," Max said of his mother.
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Max said the daily struggle meant he had to grow up fast, stepping up to make sure he could also provide for and look after his half siblings until their fathers came back into their lives, leaving Max and his mother alone in the process.
“As they were pulled away, that’s when my mom started getting pulled away more mentally," he said.
Max says his mom's mental condition and living situation eventually pushed him to make his first adult decision: leaving his home to look after himself.
“I want to do better. I want to be better," Max said. "I’m tired of waking up hungry. I know my life is bad so I took the bus, I paid for a ticket."
That Greyhound ticket took Max to Richmond, Virginia, where his girlfriend — who also moved from North Carolina — was living. Max said her family agreed to take to him in, until a series a hardships caused Max to jump from multiple homes.
Because he worked after school, Max eventually saved up enough money to purchase his first vehicle which he eventually began living out of.
“I still wore the same clothes. They were never clean; they were never dirty. They were just the same clothes. Like sweats, joggers, Crocs,” Max said. “Nobody would ever have known as, ‘Oh yeah, he’s homeless,' I even had some people think I was a suburbs kid.”
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Though Max says his peers didn’t notice his desperate living situations, some of his teachers and mentors did and helped where they could with food, allowing him to use the high school showers and putting him up in a hotel when possible.
“It wasn’t every single day but every other day when they could,” Max said.
It was in his most desperate moment that Max said he found an unexpected refuge in a local house of worship.
“I was living outside of my car and this man, he comes up to the school,” Max said.
That man was Pastor Robert Winfrey of the New Life Deliverance Tabernacle. The pastor said he heard about Max’s situation from concerned members of the school system.
“I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in my warm bed knowing that he was living in his car,” Winfrey said. “I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t completely dismantled because of his homeless situation.”
After a conversation with Max, Winfrey says he opened the doors of the church cottage to the 19-year-old after learning that he didn’t have a place to cook food or a reliable place to sleep. Winfrey says providing Max with a place to cook, clean and sleep meant that he could focus more on his studies.
"When I asked him about his GPA and the first thing he said was it could be better, and I asked what that looks like and he said he had a little better than 3.0," Winfrey said. "All I could say is wow. All he needed was that one push and thank God, so far he got that push."
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The senior not only got a push, but assistance with the purchase of a new vehicle. Winfrey said the church helped Max find a more reliable vehicle that he doesn’t have to live in so that teen can focus on what he wants to live for.
“God has opened up the Red Sea again and walk across dry land so that he can graduate in May," Winfree said.
“I’m going to college for business so I’m working on that right now,” he said. “I’m going to change the world and I’m going to give back to everybody that gave to me. Everybody.”
Max says he’s received over $100,000 in scholarships, securing full ride offers to Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, and Virginia Union University. Max says he also was accepted into Ohio State.
This story was originally published by A.J. Nwoko with the Scripps News Group in Richmond, Virginia.
