Tyler was ready to die. A ten-year-old boy, broken by bullies, begging to join his dead father instead of walking back into school. His mother collapsed in the yard, sobbing. The school gave his attackers three days. Three days. So I picked up my phone. By dawn, the street shook with engine thu…
Tyler stepped out of the house that morning still bruised, still small, but no longer alone. The rumble of forty-seven bikes wrapped around him like armor. Neighbors watched from their porches as his mom’s car rolled forward, a wall of leather and chrome at his back. At school, the halls fell silent.
The six boys who had once cornered him in a bathroom now shrank against the lockers, pale and wordless, as we walked Tyler to his classroom and placed him gently back into his life.
Months passed. The escorts grew less frequent as his courage grew stronger. The bullying stopped. Tyler became the kid who started an anti-bullying club, the boy who took his protector’s hand at his father’s grave and said, “I don’t want to die anymore.” He calls me his guardian angel, but that’s not quite right. I’m just a man who remembers what it feels like to be unprotected—and refuses to let any child feel that way again.