TAMPA — Angel Torres was never expected to walk unassisted after a debilitating military training accident.
In a few short days, he will be walking across the commencement stage at the University of South Florida to accept a master’s degree in management from the Muma College of Business — the first in his family to hold an advanced college degree.
At 40, he has defied the odds while becoming the person that he needed.
The Port Richey Army veteran lives in the first house he’s ever called home.
He and his wife are raising their infant son, creating the first stable family he’s ever known.
The litany of firsts is almost incomprehensible, given Torres’ hardscrabble life marked by abandonment, severe poverty, abuse, violence and paralysis.
While the obstacles seem never-ending, he doesn’t see it that way.
“My life is perfect for who I am,” he said. “I wouldn’t be as driven if it weren’t for my mom abandoning me and all the abuse I’ve been through. For me, life is beautiful, and you have to live it. You have to experience it. I feel blessed that I got to live the life I’ve lived.”
‘They weren’t exactly good people’
Torres grew up in severe poverty in Puerto Rico. He was so poor, he lived in a crude shanty and used a nearby river to bathe.
At 4, he was abandoned by his mother. The middle child with four siblings, Torres circulated between four different foster families in the child welfare system until his foster family moved to Pennsylvania, bringing him to the U.S. as a teenager.
“They weren’t exactly good people,” he said of his last foster family. “They got caught up with drugs.”
At 16, the child welfare system moved him from Pennsylvania to New York to live with his mom. That’s where details about his family life get hazy. He attended North Rockland High School, just outside of New York City. But familywise, he doesn’t have definitive details because high school transcripts and custody records are incomplete.
A recent attempt to find more about his adolescent life hit a dead end.
“The lady literally said that my file was closed because they thought I was either dead or a victim of human trafficking because they had no information on me,” he said. “Yeah, my life has been insane.”
‘Don’t tell me I can’t’
After he earned his GED, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He completed trainings at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and served in an airborne and artillery unit in Alaska.
Following a harrowing airborne operation where his parachute didn’t deploy but his reserve one did, Torres broke both his legs, his left hip, right quad, kneecap, as well as suffering other debilitating injuries. Not only did the accident leave him with a traumatic brain injury, but his legs, septum and jaw were reconstructed.
Doctors told him he would never again walk unassisted. Torres wouldn’t believe them.
“Don’t tell me I can’t do something because a book says it,” he said. “That’s the type of doctor I don’t like. I had other doctors tell me they believed I can.”
He took his physical comeback seriously. He committed to physical therapy. He swam almost daily. He climbed on the treadmill and walked for an hour. These efforts added up. Today, he’s even jogging a bit, though he still has pain when he walks.
He has never let the memory loss from the traumatic brain injury hold him back or beat him down.
“So, I forgot something. That’s all right. I can remember something new. I think of it like getting a whole new library to put new books in, instead of letting it beat me,” he said.
Diving into education
Torres started a library of his own. He has saved every class book since starting his higher education journey four years ago. He earned a general associate degree and a bachelor’s degree in public policy administration at St. Petersburg College.
On Dec. 12, he will graduate from USF and add his diploma to a wall of framed academic degrees and honors in his Port Richey home.
“I see my name and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ How did I end up doing this? I can’t say it’s the degrees because the degrees to me are just a piece of paper. I started enjoying what I was learning,” he said.
Torres is even considering getting a doctorate in criminology, though that might have to wait as he has used up most of his GI Bill funds.
“I started pursuing education because my wife, Rachel, believed in me so much that she started to make me believe in myself,” he said. “I love learning new things. With the GI Bill, it gave me freedom to learn. And I’ve taken advantage of it. I’m blessed to be able to do that.”
A ‘chance’ meeting at Muma
His pathway toward a master’s degree started with a chance meeting. He was at the Veterans Affairs hospital for a procedure when he decided to swing by USF to get lunch.
He bought a sandwich at Rocky’s Hideaway in the Muma College of Business, walked upstairs and ran into Sherri Pooley, an academic services administrator in the graduate programs office. She welcomed him into her office and took the time to listen.
Torres said he went to USF that day because he had a son on the way and wanted to see “if somebody will give me a chance.”
“I was like, ‘Listen. I don’t come from family. I don’t have a mom and dad to help me. I’m not the richest guy in the world. But I do have heart. And I want to try to do something more’,” he said.
Life throws challenges at you and you just keep going. That’s the way I think about it. I feel like I became the person that I needed.
Angel Torres
That ‘something more’ turned out to be enrolling in the master’s degree in management program, which he started a month after meeting with Pooley.
Torres said he’s grateful for all the second chances and chance meetings that have come his way.
In January, he hopes to start a deputy training program with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office. With a master’s degree, he hopes to eventually become a lieutenant or detective and work with human trafficking victims.
Yet another full-circle moment and milestone, as he’ll be the first in his family to go into law enforcement.
How he beat the odds by overcoming abandonment, poverty and abuse is a bit of a blur to him.
"Life throws challenges at you and you just keep going. That’s the way I think about it,” he said. “I feel like I became the person that I needed.”