Eunice Kennedy Shriver was one of those people you just wish could have lived forever. Her life, her legacy, her spirit, and her work touched millions of lives around the world as she fought to gain attention, respect and support for those living with physical and “intellectual disabilities.”
As a tribute to her life, I’d like to do something rather unconventional, and pay respects to another. A young man whose life she undoubtedly impacted, even though the two never met, let alone knew one another existed.
Armando Escobedo is an impressive young man with a college diploma just in front of him and an extensive track record of community service and leadership already behind him. For over a year now I’ve known him only as the CEO of two different startup companies, with a full staff, a sharp web site, a dense resume, a rich history of community leadership, and an unwavering commitment to being Young & Successful. In fact, even in my world – where we work with ambitious and highly accomplished young people everyday – his commitment is impressive to witness. At least I thought it was…until I heard his full story. Suddenly, calling him “impressive” seemed woefully inadequate.
A few weeks ago, during one of his regular calls to our office to touch base and let us know what he’s up to, Armando said he wanted to make an introduction. His idea was to forge a partnership between YSN and a group he’s involved in called Ability Counts. Ability Counts is a community non-profit created to provide meaningful employment and vocational training for individuals with developmental disabilities.
When I asked how he got involved, Armando let me in on a little secret. He’s one of their clients.
Intrigued, I asked him to tell me more. With that simple request, the life of Armando Escobedo unfolded like a movie, narrated by the main character, drawing out the range of human emotion from any soul in range. In the next half hour, I cried, laughed, clenched my teeth, got angry, cheered and found new hope.
Armando’s story can best be told from the beginning…the very beginning…with a mother, addicted to drugs while pregnant, who gave birth prematurely, and instead of giving her new son the prospect of a bright future, instead gave him brain damage. After just two years, she passed away. Armando, with no other family to care for him, entered the foster care system.
One of the very lucky ones, he was placed with a family that took him in as their own and made the commitment to raise him. His new mother, gave him perhaps the greatest gift of all: hope. And god knows he needed it.
At just two years old, the doctors tried to tell her that he’d never speak, walk or function normally. To her, that was an unacceptable diagnosis. Instead she carted him off to one therapist after another, day in and day out. Every day. Her determination to beat all the odds, eventually became his, and the young man Armando has grown into today, bears little resemblance to the person you might imagine he’d become with such profound challenges to face.
Today, at 20 years old, he’s a poised, polished student, bursting with passion and enthusiasm. His only visible battle scars: a slight lisp, and a pension for making no more tiny little errors in grammar, speech or spelling than your average ADD or Dyslexic kid. But he’s still working on all of that too. In fact he’s hired both a secretary and a chief of staff to keep his company image and his in tip top shape.
EMC Corporation his latest entrepreneurial venture, is a full service web development and event company…his ticket to freedom, independence, financial security and success.
An entrepreneur at heart, Armando is one you expect to see great things from. When it comes to success, he wants it, he can taste it, his hunger makes him drive himself and his team towards it every day. Raised by a family of business owners (with a franchise cleaning service and a clothing line), you might say he was bred for entrepreneurship.
Like any good entrepreneur, Armando has learned to multi task while he climbs the ladder to his success. Next on his agenda, finish out his final year at Riverside Community College, and become the first person in his natural family to earn a degree of any kind. Beyond graduation, he intends to continue his extensive work with Kiwanis Club, the organization he has dedicated hundreds of hours to over the years. In fact, we first met Armando while he was busy actively expanding the regional Circle K International program and wanted to join forces. (Not only had he helped start the club, but he was instrumental in growing it from 4 members to almost 7000!) Monique Peltz, who works closely with me and our marketing department, got on several calls to help Armando with his venture. While the partnership never materialized, the budding friendship turned into a mentoring relationship.
We were fascinated with Armando and all the work he had done at such a young age to rise through the ranks of this major global service organization – Kiwanis International. Even in junior high, when most kids are trading baseball cards and video games Armando was a club officer, then state officer. From there, he launched the first Key Club at Centennial High School, growing it from 7 initial members to almost 256. Getting the chance to help build the winning float at the Pasadena Rose Parade was a crowning moment that motivated him to keep doing more to expand the organization’s reach in his region.
To keep a steady income coming in, Armando can be found working with Ability Counts during the week (that organization he first contacted us about in the beginning of our story.) As a member of the Ability Counts warehouse crew, his job is to package and ship supplies to major retailers like Kohls and JC Penny. There, Armando works side by side with over 400 other “consumers” of Ability Counts, all with a wide range of challenges of their own to contend with. If they do well in this program, workers are offered more lucrative jobs in the community – from city landscaping to work in other warehouses. Armando is one of the highest paid and highest functioning in the crew.
As Armando likes to say “Disability doesn’t make the individual, individuals make the disabilities. I do everything I can to read, speak, walk and function well. It’s one thing if you’re blind or deaf. But for me it’s mental. I believe I can accomplish almost anything if I put my mind to it and have an uplifting environment.”
Armando is far from disabled. As Eunice Kennedy Shriver would say, he may be “intellectually challenged”, but his courage, determination, attitude, and accomplishments to date ensure professional success is something he’s more than capable of achieving, in spades.
Thanks to Armando’s courage, and of course, his permission, this is the first time his story has been publicly told. We hope it inspires you all as much as it has us.
For more on Armando, visit his website ArmandoEscobedo.com or meet him on YSN.
We’ve all got some big challenges to deal with these days: this wacky economy, maintaining cash flow, laying safety nets, building our companies, attracting more business, all while managing to stay sane and tenacious through these trying times.
I always wanted to be both an entrepreneur and writer. Which is what led me to start Literary Magic, an online literary magazine. I was only 15 at the time and was heading into an industry known for thick competition and thinner business plans, but I used my verve and love for writing and words to distinguish my creation from the rest. So was born Literary Magic, the first online source for literati of all parts: short stories and literature combined with linguistics and etymology.
Here’s a great story of unexpected success written by our friend Karen Axelton, writer for 
This week we interviewed one of our favorite YSN members – 
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