CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:
This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Celeste Headlee. Michel Martin is away. Our friends at All Things Considered have been collecting stories of moments when people's careers took off. It's called My Big Break.
They recently spoke to Dr. Sampson Davis who grew up in the rough parts of Newark, N.J. He talked about how doing a stint in juvie put his life in perspective.
SAMPSON DAVIS: Just a walk down the street, I would see drug dealers. I would see people stealing cars. I would see prostitution. I would see people using drugs. And that was my surrounding, that was my backdrop. When I was 17 and a half, I committed a robbery with a group of guys from the streets. And so dumb to think about it, but we called ourselves the Robin Hood of the community. We were going to rob drug dealers and give back to the poor.
When the robbery took place, we jumped out the car and walked up to them and sort of patting them down and taking things out of their pocket. We noticed - I noticed another car pulled up to the scene. And literally within seconds it was just sirens everywhere, cop cars everywhere. One of the guys that I was with, he's running past me. And he could see - he looked at me in my direction, and I could see the fear in his face, and the, you know, what was I thinking, as he was being chased by the police. And he was caught. So all four of us was taken off to jail.
And then I remember I spent the summer between my junior year and senior year in juvenile detention with the crime that I committed. Had I been in a - considered an adult, which was age 18, then I would've had a felony charge. And I'm quite certain I would've been given years in jail.
And so when I was sitting there in that room and having moments to myself in the cold room with a thin sheet, and I realized that if I didn't change my life around and stay focused more on the academics, that I would die on the streets. And that was my big break. When I returned to high school my senior year, that's when I made the pact with my two friends. And we made this pact that we were going to become doctors.
We made this promise that we were going to figure it out. Being the first one in my family to go to college, I didn't know I had to fill out a college application. And I had to take the bus to go to my own college interview. I made it to Seton Hall University and went on to medical school.
And two of us became physicians, one became a dentist. But we all are practicing doctors in New Jersey and New York. Now, I was fortunate to come back home to my hometown of Newark, N.J. and practice emergency medicine in the same hospital that I was born in. I'm sitting in morning report with the rest of the doctors, and I'm looking at the board. And the board is made up of a medley of different names of patients who came in the night before who were shot, stabbed, car accidents, bar fights - you name it.
And so I see the name Don Moses (ph) across the board, and I close my eyes and I think, like, what are the - Don Moses. I know a Don Moses. This is the Don Moses I did the crime with, the robbery with years ago. So I sprint down the hallway, hit the button on the wall. The double doors swing open. And as I approach the room, I start to see familiar faces. And lo and behold it was his family.
He had been shot multiple times, and he had died. Literally, I had just chills throughout my body because I just - it hit me. If I had decided to still stay down that same road, I would have - had been dead. I probably would've been lying right next to Don who lost his life on the streets.
To be back in Newark as the same physical being but with a different mental perspective, I feel like I went through these things in life - I never wished them on anyone - but certainly enough, if I can make it, anyone can make it.
HEADLEE: Dr. Sampson Davis, physician and author of "Living And Dying In Brick City." And All Things Considered wants to hear about your big break. Send them an email at mybigbreak@npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.