While running errands for his parents late Sunday morning, University of Arizona-bound quarterback Jamarye Joiner saw a woman near the side of the road. She held a sign that read: “I have three kids and I need money to feed them.”
This is not an uncommon occurrence in Tucson, or throughout America. But something about this particular woman and her plight struck Joiner, a senior at Cienega High School, in a personal way.
She reminded him of his mother, who endured similar difficulties about a decade ago.
“Being a single mom isn’t easy,” Joiner said. “I know the struggle she’s going through, how her kids feel. It hit me in my heart.”
After driving another mile or so, Joiner decided to turn around and find the woman. She had been standing near the Fry’s on South Houghton Road, and Joiner spotted her walking across the parking lot toward a beat-up RV.
Joiner knocked on the door of the RV, which was parked near a Bank of America, and the woman stepped out with a baby boy in her arms.
Joiner told the Star he spoke to the woman, hugged her and gave her all the money he had in his wallet — $65. She told him she had $3.
“Everything’s going to be OK,” Joiner, 18, told the woman. “God has a way. He’s going to show you.”
Joiner saw two other small children inside the RV. He never had done something like this before. But he couldn’t help but think of his own situation. Joiner is the middle of three brothers, each of whom has a different father. His mother was single for a time, raising all three.
“I told her my experience,” Joiner said, referring to the woman. “She was crying, full of emotion. I was teary-eyed. I was trying to hold back. But at the same time, I wanted to show her it was OK, that I’d been through the same thing she’s going through.”
Joiner’s mother, Christina Peña, has been with her husband, Alton Frazier, for almost nine years. Frazier has helped bring stability and discipline to her and her sons’ lives. It wasn’t always that way.
Peña and her eldest son, Jordan, once had to sleep in her car for three nights when she was between apartments. Jordan, now 22 and in the Navy, was a toddler at the time.
For about three years, when Jamarye was a boy, Peña was on her own. Sometimes she wouldn’t have enough food to feed herself and her sons. She always made sure they were provided for, even if she had to go to bed hungry.
“It was difficult,” said Peña, a physical-rehab technician and assistant track coach at Cienega. “I tried to work extra hours, figure out what bill is going to go where.
“It was a struggle for us for a little bit. It wasn’t forever. But it was a rough patch. A very rough patch.”
No matter her lot in life, Peña always taught her sons that small gestures can make a big difference. When they were younger, she sometimes would take them to work. She would remind them that the sick and injured weren’t just patients — they were people.
“A little act of kindness — I’ve always tried to teach my kids that,” Peña said. “I feel blessed, because my son paid attention.”
Although his mother also had warned him that people could try to take advantage of him, Joiner knew he was doing the right thing when he tracked down the woman, opened his heart and emptied his wallet. Peña wasn’t surprised when he called to tell her what he had done.
“I started getting emotional at work,” Peña said. “My son … helped somebody who was in need.”
When she got home later Sunday, Joiner implored his mother to look at Twitter.
When she saw his post — which had been liked almost 1,400 times as of Wednesday afternoon — Peña started crying. She gave her son a big hug and came to a realization.
“There’s a reason why you go through things in life,” she said.
If he hadn’t been one of three boys being raised for a while by a single mom, maybe Joiner wouldn’t have turned his car around Sunday. If his mother hadn’t shown him how much harder other people have it, maybe he wouldn’t have cared.
Instead, Joiner did something nice for a complete stranger. And he was able to share that rewarding experience with others.
“It was really just showing people that something small, having a little bit of whatever you have and giving it to somebody else, can make their day,” Joiner said.
