St. Louis Catholic High School students on Wednesday heard the story of a man who had everything and lost it all due to poor choices.
Damon West was a star high school athlete, Division I football player, presidential campaign employee and successful stockbroker before his life fell to pieces after he became addicted to methamphetamine and led a string of burglaries that landed him a 65-year prison sentence in 2009.
Now out on parole, West travels to high schools warning students of the dangers of poor decisions in hopes they learn from his mistakes.
“When we go around talking to schools, the emphasis is that rarely is it ever a good idea in life to make your own mistakes,” West said. “There are so many mistakes of others of what not to do. You should learn from other people’s mistakes instead of learning from your own mistakes.”
West grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, where he was a three-year starting quarterback at Thomas Jefferson High School. He signed to play for North Texas, where his football career ended due to injury. He graduated and moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked on the 2004 presidential campaign of Dick Gephardt.
West said his problems started with innocent vices.
“In my little brain, I’m thinking. ‘I’m not hurting anybody. I’m just smoking a little pot, drinking a little beer and some booze. Who am I hurting really?’ ” West said.
“In hindsight I know that I was hurting myself. And the list of people I was going to hurt throughout all this was just going to grow and grow.”
While working as a stockbroker in Dallas, West became addicted to meth, costing him his career and his home. He resorted to crime, organizing over 30 burglaries and earning the moniker “The Uptown Burglar.”
Within seven years of his sentencing, West was released on parole. He said he has since built a solid support team around him and gives seminars to schools and prisons in the area, hoping to prevent others from making the same mistakes he did.
“When we come into this room, we’re looking to find one kid, one person that can be affected by this and try to stem the flow of pain and misery of society,” West said. “We want to take this story and give it as an example.”
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