Dear Your Honor,

	I am writing this letter to help you get to know the kind of person I am. I really try to hide this aspect of myself, but I like helping people. Here I will tell you 3 times I helped people and then I will go into why I do it. Sometimes I do big things and other times I do little things to help someone out, usually without them asking for any help.
	The first was in 2018. I was working at Wal-mart and one evening a gentleman came in looking for a monitor. We settle on a 32” tv that had the same specifications as a monitor that cost $50 more. I asked him if there was anything else I could help him with and he responded “I am from Sierra Leone. I want to learn to speak English better. I want to sound competent when I speak with my colleagues”. I empathized with the guy and acknowledged American English is a hard language to learn with out rules that don’t make sense like I before E except after C or when in eigh as in neighbor or weird. So, we talk about a few things like the public library, Rosetta Stone, and we settle on an ESL course at SDSU that I tell him to check out.
	The second story was in 2012. My sister asked me if I would go over and look at her in-law’s computer. I’m kind of the family IT guy. I head over there and fix the problem, it doesn’t take very long. Now 2 weeks prior to this something happened. Lori, my sister’s stepmother in laws step-daughter Beth had been high on inhalants while driving. She hit a man on a bicycle and drove off but was found rather quickly by police. Beth was sentenced to 2 years in the penitentiary. As I was leaving, I see Lori working outside in the garden. I stop and say “Hi, Lori, how are you doing?”. She replies, “Oh me, I’m doing fine”. I respond with “That’s not what I meant”. Then Lori starts saying things like “What will people think? What is going to happen to my 6 grandkids?” things like that. I talked with her about 5 minutes but mostly I just listened. I don’t recall what I said to her but a couple of days later I got a text from my sister Stacy saying whatever I told Lori made her feel a lot better.
	The last story was around 2014-15. I was working at Advance as an assistant in the Medical Services office. I also was in something called Leadership that was a group in the organization. We had a woman with tumors in her uterus. She was non-verbal and her family did not want to have the surgery for staging and typing because they thought she wouldn’t survive. I was prepping paperwork for her annual physical and thought to myself, there’s got to be a better way. After doing a little research I found a blood test called CA-125 which checks for various uterine and ovarian cancers. I ask my nurse about it and she says if the woman’s doctor will order it go for it. When the day comes for the woman’s annual physical exam the Doctor says great idea. I schedule it for a couple weeks away and then I do some more reading. Just having tumors is not enough for Medicare and Medicaid to cover the test. While at the lab one day with someone else I ask how much the test is. Then, I ask her service coordinator if she has the $115 for the lab test and she does. So, we do the blood test and await the results. Now the acceptable range is 0-37 depending on menstrual cycle, the woman’s results were 237. Her doctor then ordered some pain control for her as her family did not want to treat the cancer. Her residential staff said she had seemed much happier. Unfortunately, she died about 6 months later of necrotic bowel.
	You’re probably why I did these things while staying as anonymous as I could. Mainly, because I could. Also because of my three philosophies about life. I believe that one person can make a difference. I also believe in a world gone wrong, make it right. Finally, (and this is a little abstract) even a fool knows that he cannot reach out and touch the stars, but this does not stop the wise man from trying. There are times that I think “this is way to big, there’s nothing I can do”, then I ask myself (this may sound silly) “What would Batman do?”. He is my inspiration, just a regular guy who had something horrible happen to him and he used it as a springboard to become a legend.  Thinking of him made me wonder, can I ever be that person. Would I ever be able to be that person to somebody else and to prevent things to happen to people who would experience the same hurt, pain, and agony. In Leadership at Advance we talked about what you can do when you do not have any power. I sat at that table with Directors and Supervisors and I said “Even though I have no official power whatsoever, I can still influence people with my ideas.

	For example, I learned of a man here in South Dakota who was on death row named Charles Rhines for basically killing a witness to a crime. The thing is the jury admitted giving him the death penalty because he was gay, and they thought if they gave him life in prison it would be somewhere, he wanted to go. Now I have known more than a few gay men and women, but I’ve never met one that wanted to be in prison. The state supreme court will not review his case. What I did was I posted the news story to a news filter site I read daily. It got over 7000 clicks, and 172 comments. I thought perhaps someone with more power than I could help this man.
	There was a time that I investigated volunteering for the court to work with abused and neglected children. I guess my only chance now would be to buy a motorcycle and join Bikers against child abuse.