Before Shemar Savage was an NFL prospect, he was a young man wandering on the train tracks. Jill Hayes remembers it well.
“I found him walking on the railroad tracks by himself. We were on the way to little league baseball tryouts and Shemar was walking alone, filthy, down these train tracks. My husband asked him if he was going to play, and Shemar just looked down and said no. That night he came home with us to hang out with our oldest son Connor and he just never left.”
Shemar Savage is no longer a 12 year old, but he still plays ball as he pursues his dream of being an NFL player. At 6’4, 220 pounds the Prairie View A&M wide receiver has a smile you can almost hear. Behind an aura of positivity is a man whose life story is a challenging journey filled with abuse and neglect, but has steadied because of love, kindness, and football.
Shemar says his childhood memories do not include his mom.
“He was with me from when he was a baby until he was 12,” recalls Shemar’s 76 year old grandmother, Shirley Savage.
“It was hard for me to not be around,” says Shemar’s biological mother Zellicka Savage. “I was in and out of prison and wasn’t able to see him as much as I wanted.”
Shaking his head, Shemar takes a deep breath and tells his story.
“It wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy. We moved a few times over the years. Man, I just remember being at my grandmother’s, looking around and it’s my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my brother and two sisters, and then my sister had her first kid at 16. The place was packed and it just kept getting more crowded.”
There wasn’t just a lack of space, Shemar remembers.
“There was abuse when I was kid. I got hit so many times I didn’t want to go home from school.”
The constant smile that appeared to be permanently stuck on his face is gone. His voice which bounces with energy softens. There’s an acceptance and understanding of what has happened to him in his life. Those scars are deep as he thinks about his path which includes a twisted evolution of abuse.
“It started as physical — but it became verbal and mental,” Savage remembers. “I still remember many of the things that were said, but I used it as motivation.”
Sports was a refuge. It’s not an understatement to say that passion for play changed the trajectory of his life.
The Hayes family took Savage into their home when he was 12 years old and it was obvious there were issues. Medically, Shemar wasn’t regularly checked out and needed to be taught how to properly brush his teeth. On his very first trip to the dentist he had 12 cavities. The most alarming part of that experience was Shemar was gone for two months and no one reached out to find out where he was.
The support that comes from a mother and father didn’t exist in the conventional sense for Shemar, but he had it with Jill and Fred Hayes. The trust between a 12 year old boy in need of help and the Hayes family was earned over time. It’s not just the obvious displays of love, but the little things that can make a difference.
“I remember crying after a game.” Shemar said. “Jill gave me a hug and it’s the first time in my life I can remember feeling true warmth from an embrace. That one moment has never left my mind and I now know how powerful a hug can be.”
The Hayes family knew Savage needed emotional support, but some of his actions revealed his scars.
“Shemar shared a room with Connor and we gave him his own space. I was cleaning the room and I saw a huge pile of wrappers under the bed, but didn’t say anything. It happened again and Connor told me at night Shemar would go and get food. I would ask why he did it, and Shemar would say he didn’t know.”
It was painfully clear: Shemar learned his next meal was not guaranteed.
“I remember getting home from school and wanting to have something to eat and my aunt had locked up the fridge,” Savage said.
The Hayes family didn’t just house Shemar, he was one of them. He thrived in the structure and stayed with them for two years. By the time his freshman year rolled around, Shemar was back at his grandmother’s. “I liked the structure of the Hayes’ but at that time I didn’t like how I was missing out on time with some of my friends.”
His stay didn’t last long.
“Everything was going bad. I went from taking vitamins everyday, doing the right things to doing whatever I wanted. I had the Hayes family to help with my choices and suddenly I’m making bad choices on my own.”
Savage would end up back with the Hayes family where academics were paramount. Shemar was well behind his peers. “He missed large chunks of time at school,” recalls Jill Hayes. “When he was in elementary school he didn’t talk much because of all the trauma in his life. He had a routine with us and you could tell he wanted to be better. When I heard it was going to be a five-year plan to graduate (high school) that was not acceptable, we wanted him to graduate in four years.”
Before Shemar Savage moved in with the Hayes family they had four kids and the logistics of coordinating the schedule of five was hard. Savage wanted more autonomy.
“The Hayes’ always took me places, but I knew they also needed to take care of their other kids,” Shemar remembered. “I didn’t want them to feel obligated to do something. I didn’t want to feel like a burden.”
Shemar decided to move on. The newly gained freedom was confused for isolation.
“My sophomore year was tough – I was definitely going down the wrong path. One night we set off fireworks and busted up a car window. We’re laughing it up and one by one all my friends are going home. It’s 3:55 AM, I’m by myself and realize I don’t have a place to go.”
At 15, Savage was homeless, sleeping in parks, couch surfing with cousins and getting in trouble in class. Things came to a head with members of the school who had an intervention.
“I’m in a room looking at my coach, guidance counselor, the athletic director and our assistant principal and they said, you need to pick one of us to live with.”
“I don’t think I even asked my wife, Brittany, I knew she would say yes,” remembers football coach Andrew Jones. “We absolutely love Shemar and would do anything for him, but we had our challenges.”
Raising a teenager is already arduous , but combining that with a background of abuse and the lack of a consistent parental influence created problems. Shemar’s schedule was packed — weight room, class, film study and practice followed by a trip home to the authoritative male figure he was with most of the day. Savage paused before explaining his time with the Jones family.
“He couldn’t control me. I got a tattoo in a garage and he couldn’t believe it. I definitely pushed the limits and struggled with the rules. It was a lot to have him as my coach and treating me one way and then going home, he’s a father figure.”
Those heavy moments would lead to Shemar moving on.
“When he left, my wife was devastated. We did everything together, it was more than just football.”
After leaving the Jones’, Savage lived with one of his teammates’ families. Along with running back Toa Taua, the duo were the stars of the team. Taua would go on to have a stellar career at Nevada.
“That was an amazing experience. I took some college visits with Toa and I was also learning about JUCO ball.”
The demand became a lot for the Taua family and that’s when Shemar found himself on the move again.
As Shemar’s guidance counselor, Lana` Huyck was aware of not only his athletic success, but his academic and family challenges. She and her husband Keith never could have predicted this path to parenthood. The couple unsuccessfully tried to have their own kids, but this felt like fate. Keith knew about Shemar through his wife’s stories and he also watched the football star on game days. While the couple had natural questions about being ready to have a teenager live with them, Keith told his wife he thought they should take him in.