Disabled vet finds new mission at Tucson's friendliest corner

It’s Wednesday morning outside Blenman Elementary School, and crossing guard Vernon Williams is working up a sweat from all the joy he’s spreading.

One driver offers Vernon a distracted half-wave without taking her hand off the steering wheel, so he doubles down, planting a kiss on his hand and throwing it at her like a Frisbee.“You be safe now!” Vernon tells her. “Be safe!”“Good morning, sunshine!” he yells to one little girl as she arrives at the corner with her mother, ready to cross. “I’ve been waiting on you all!”Vernon says he and Leeth are on a mission: “Our goal is to make this the friendliest corner in Tucson.

About two years ago, she found herself working the busy, narrow intersection by herself after her former crossing guard partner retired. That’s when Leeth started waving to passing motorists and anyone else she could see, just to keep herself going. “It’s really fun,” Johns said, after walking her boys to the corner so Leeth could lead them safely across Country Club. “Everybody just seems so excited to see them.”

Vernon was born at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1962, the oldest of four kids in a military family that bounced around the country. He got mixed up in gangs and spent years in and out of jail cells, drug treatment centers and psychiatric facilities. Finally in the late 1990s, he says, the police swept him up along Phoenix’s notorious Van Buren Street as part of a drug sting called Operation Corner Stop. He would spend the next six years in prison for the trafficking and sale of crack cocaine.

Vernon credits the Gospel Rescue Mission and the VA's outpatient PTSD program for finally helping him break the cycle of addiction and mental illness, though it didn’t happen right away. He says he relapsed one final time in 2015, after graduating from the rescue mission’s “life recovery program” and meeting a single mother online who would become his wife.

Green lightIn August, TUSD launched a new video series on its YouTube channel called “Everyday Heroes.” Vernon was the first district employee to be featured.

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