The Alvarez Initiative launched three weeks later.
It's in every school in our county now, and dozens more since. Free counseling. Mentorship. A quiet, safe way for a kid sitting alone at a lunch table to reach an adult who will listen.
Mr. Alvarez's widow came to the launch. Daniel had found her, flown her in, seated her in the front row. When they unveiled the plaque with her husband's name, she held Daniel's hand and cried, and Daniel — who'd had one kind adult in four years of childhood — got to give that man's name to something that will outlive all of us.
"He'd have laughed at the fuss," she told Daniel. "But he kept every one of your report cards, you know. The ones you brought to show him. He said, 'That boy's going to be somebody, and it won't be because of that school, it'll be in spite of it.'"
