More than 2,000 Cullman County Schools underclassmen attended the district’s second large-scale student expo event Wednesday, Oct. 23, where former professional BMX racer and convicted felon, Tony Hoffman, shared his journey of how he was able to recover from drug addiction and control his mental health in order to achieve his goals.

The Cullman County Board of Education held the first-of-its-kind student expo in April. The event was a designed as a precursor to the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Month in May and students heard from the founders of the Hilinski’s Hope Foundation, Mark and Kym Hilinski, who lost their 21-year-old son, Tyler, to suicide in 2018 despite his promising college football career.

District officials have been treating high school seniors to a special cookout and wanted last week’s event to focus on grades 9-11. The exclusion of the district’s upperclassmen did not mean a smaller scale operation however.

CCBOE Mental Health Services Coordinator Karen Pinion said roughly 2,300 students were bused to Temple Baptist Church Wednesday morning, a feat she said would have been impossible without overwhelming support from the community.

“The incredible support and willingness of so many people to pull something like this off has been incredible. People from all over our school district, members of Temple Baptist Church, Garrison Gives Hope and all of our many vendors pitched in to pull this off. Our bus drivers were also critical to making this happen. We had 51 buses there. I think that’s a little over half of our fleet,” Pinion said. “It was nothing short of a miracle.”

CCBOE Mental Health Services Coordinator Karen Pinion said she hoped to continue that conversation around the importance of maintaining one’s mental health in a way that coincided with the start of National Red Ribbon Week — one the country’s largest drug prevention and awareness campaigns which takes place each year from Oct. 23-31.

“We wanted to tie mental health in with drug and alcohol prevention. Hoffman has lived such an incredible life and has such an incredible story that deals with so many things that our kids deal with on a daily basis,” Pinion said. “This event really is to let our kids know that they are first and foremost in all of the decisions that we make.

While still a senior at Clovis High School in Fresno County, California, Hoffman had already developed a reputation as a promising professional BMX racer. He received sponsorship deals with multiple brands and was featured on the cover of BMXer Magazine. But, he said his undiagnosed anxiety and depression derailed his career and led to substance abuse and later a life of addiction, crime, homelessness and incarceration.

While serving a two-year sentence for a drug-related robbery, Hoffman said he began to realize that his mentality and inability to reach out for help had been fueling the deterioration of his mental health and decided that he could “reverse engineer” his situation by willfully changing his outlook from “I can’t, I won’t and I’m unable,” to “I can, I will and I’m able.”

He set four goals for himself before his parole in 2008: to race BMX professionally, go to the Olympics, start a non-profit organization to help others overcome their own addictions and to become a professional speaker.

Today, through a strong support network, therapy and a more intentional positive outlook, Hoffman has achieved those goals. The Freewheel Project has been successful in helping young people through action sports and Hoffman also founded the drug and alcohol treatment facility pH Wellness. In 2016, He coached BMX racer Brooke Crain to a 4th place finish at the Summer Olympics in Rio, Spain.

Hoffman’s presentation shied away from telling students directly about the dangers of drug addiction and instead, as he put it, “gave them the tools,” to draw upon his own experiences to make more informed decisions.

Pinion said seeking out speakers with this type of more personal speaking style has been an intentional effort on her part and, based on the feedback she has received, it has been successful.

“The key to these events so far has been the complete and sheer vulnerability of these presenters to come and share. That is what has made these events so successful,” Pinion said. “I just feel like these last two events have been so different for the kids and even adults. I’ve had adults who have reached out to say that ‘That was exactly what I needed to hear.”

Pinion said the district’s Red Ribbon Week campaign will continue through Oct. 31 with the elementary and middle school receiving lessons on topics such as peer pressure and making smart choices.

A follow up student expo is already in the works for December and will feature former Division 1 football coach and author Willie Spears.