Who:Chris Harris Jr. | CB, Denver Broncos | 29 years old
What: The Chris Harris Jr. Foundation, dedicated to helping underprivileged kids in myriad ways.
Why: Raised without much money and never of great size, Harris has always fancied himself an underdog -- and has a soft spot for most every other longshot.
*Â *Â *Â *Â *
Chris Harris Jr. can't tell a story without using the word "underdog." Not when he's talking about being a young kid in Oklahoma, with a mom who worked two jobs and a dad he only saw every other weekend. Not when he talks about how the folks at the Salvation Army in Tulsa supported him, nor about his college scholarship offers (grand total: one).
He says "underdog" when he explains three different points in his NFL career and he even drops it in the story about courting his wife, Leah.
"She had a rule about dating athletes -- she wouldn't do it," Harris says, insisting he was a longshot boyfriend when he first Leah, the mother of his three daughters. And that's where he throws in another word he frequently turns to: determination. Because even though it took him four years from the time he first met Leah in a college bible study to get her to go on a date, like in everything else in his life, he wouldn't quit.
Now in his eighth NFL season, Harris refuses to quit using his platform to make a positive impact. And it's championing the underdogs that draws him -- and drives him.
"I had a huge opportunity to help kids, especially kids just like me," he says, explaining the impetus behind the six-year-old Chris Harris Jr. Foundation.
Each of the last five Thanksgivings, he's given away more than 125 turkeys to families in Oklahoma who might not have had one without him. In 2013, he started hosting an annual football camp in his hometown of Bixby, Oklahoma, free to 300 kids. In 2015, he started a Shop with a Jock program, taking 50 children from the Salvation Army and the Denver Children's Home for a holiday shopping spree -- and enlisting his teammates to come, too.
He hosted a coat drive last year, clothing 300 kids and sending an additional $5,000 to the Denver Children's Home for the purchase of more winter gear. This year, he launched a football camp for 200 kids in Denver, and brought his start-of-school backpack giveaway to both Oklahoma and Colorado.
He asks kids at his camp to sign pledges that they'll fight against bullying, and he has handed out bracelets that read, "Use Your Power for Good." He talks constantly about the low expectations people always had for him when he was a kid, and passionately about the determination he's always had to prove them wrong. It's a message that resonates with the younger set, especially those at the Denver Children's Home, which houses, educates and treats children who come from low-income families and have suffered the worst sorts of trauma, abuse and neglect.
Rebecca Hea, the home's executive director, says Harris is not just a donor, but a regular visitor to the campus, and it's that personal touch that allows him to connect with the children on a deeper level than someone who just writes checks.
"When Chris spends time with the kids here, his authenticity and genuine interest in them shines through," she says. "That means the world to our kids because, so often, they've been let down by adults in their life."
Harris freely says that he looks at what other professional athletes are doing in their communities, and will happily lift ideas from their initiatives. His next goal, he says, is to build a community center.
From 2012 through 2016, the Chris Harris Jr. Foundation didn't hold any fundraising events. It received a few small grants from the NFL and a few donations, meaning all the programs it ran and sponsored for children were almost entirely funded by Chris and Leah.
Chris Harris' first NFL signing bonus back in 2011 was for $2,000. In 2015, he signed a five-year deal that included a signing bonus 5,000 times greater than the one he received as a rookie. Leah says she regularly thinks about her mother-in-law, who worked two jobs and still set the course for her two children, making sure their beds were made, their grades were good and that there was an appreciation for what they did have. Leah says that while her three daughters may have more, she and her husband have talked about them having that same work ethic, and same example.
"Even though they're just babies, we want them to understand what it means to help someone else," Harris says, explaining why he's taken his oldest daughter to various events with him. "Hopefully, if we make it a part of their lives now, it will always be a part of their life."
Just as their father's story has certainly become a part of the lives of so many of the youths his foundation works with.
Harris had only one Division I scholarship offer out of high school, from the University of Kansas. He became a full-time starter there, graduated as the Jayhawks' No. 2 tackler of all time and then didn't get an invite to the NFL Scouting Combine. He wasn't drafted that spring. Instead, he wrangled an invitation to camp with the Broncos, where he had a few short weeks to make the team -- and he did.
"That's what I try to tell the kids," he says. "If you put your mind to it, and you work hard, what you want is possible. No matter where you start from."
And there's the magic. Because since he entered the league, Harris has worked tirelessly to change where that starting point is, for as many kids as he can.
