With ‘cards stacked against’ Zykie Helton, his 4th grade teacher stepped in

Helton faced long odds growing up in foster care. Now, Helton is fresh off a season with nationally ranked Carrollton and headed to join the Georgia Bulldogs football program in time for a College Football Playoff quarterfinal.

“A young man who had all the cards stacked against him from the beginning,” Carrollton coach Joey King said. “To see him about to graduate. About to play for one of the top teams in the country. Just to see him make it is awesome.”

Perry saw something in an angry boy. She didn’t let the “30-something” referrals to the principal’s office in third grade cloud her view of his potential.

“He’s an overcomer,” she said. “He truly has worked hard to be where he is today. To me, he’s just strong. Strong-hearted. Strong-willed.”

It started with tagging along to see a football game. Her husband was coaching football for an area private school. Perry got permission from Helton’s caregivers.

“From then on, I just started helping him a lot,” Perry said. “His grandmother at the time was raising him. Then life just got hard for her at that point, and she ended up having to put him into foster care.”

Helton now lives with Perry, her husband and her family. The Perrys have three grown girls, but a family with its share of Alabama fans will now root for the Bulldogs.

“Mrs. Perry is like my second mom. She is my mom,” Helton said. “I love her to death, and without her, none of this would be possible. I promise you that.”

While Helton stays in touch with his biological relatives, he credits his progression to the Perrys, who recognized early that he needed a way to cope with his anger.

Perry signed him up for football during his fifth grade year. She also got him playing baseball and basketball.

“He played all the sports,” Perry said. “And to be honest, I was thinking, oh my lord, would he even make it? He could get mad easily. He didn’t like to take discipline. Especially from men. So every time I signed him up for a sport, I would have to talk to the coach.”

Credit: Jeff Sentell

Credit: Jeff Sentell

Helton’s journey to his life with the Perrys started with a neat coincidence.

Helton was placed into foster care in Perry’s neighborhood. The house where he lived was on Perry Street.

“I always thought about that when I was living with Mr. Billy,” Helton said of his foster parent before he moved in with the Perrys. “It seems like a coincidence, but it isn’t. God put Mrs. Perry in my life for a reason. God knew I needed her.”

She gave him rides to football or basketball games, school events and church. The trust built slowly, but she eventually decided it would be easier if he just lived with them.

That was when Helton was a major college football prospect committed to Alabama. He had been a freshman starting for a Carrollton High team that played for the state championship.

“She just took me home one day after a football or a basketball game,” he said. “She’s loved on me ever since, like I was one of hers. At the time, I didn’t really know what love was because I hadn’t ever been loved that hard.”

Helton would become integrated with the Perry family, which included Perry’s youngest son, Kai, who shares the same March 15 birthday as Helton.

Kai Perry, who is one year younger than Helton, has Down syndrome. The way Helton interacted with him made it clear she was doing the right thing.

“Zykie always has a very sweet heart,” Kimberly Perry said. “I have a son with Down syndrome whom I adopted. Zykie was always, to me, very sweet to the underdog a lot of times.”

Helton calls Kai his “hero” and acknowledges the joy he brings.

Their names — Zykie being pronounced “Zuh-kye” were so similar that the Perrys, at Kai’s request, started calling Helton by a different name.

“He got mad one day,” Helton said. “He said that my name is ‘Z’ from then on. Because every time they would say ‘Zykie’ he’ll look up and say ‘What?’ but the whole time they were talking to me.”

If we had to distill all of this into a single moment, there is one pivotal story.

Credit: Courtesy photo

Credit: Courtesy photo

Helton thinks back to getting to know the Perrys in the fifth grade.

“It was hard to trust her at first,” Helton said. “Because she was a different color than me and I really didn’t know what she wanted from me.”

One morning, while on a fishing trip after he started going to church with the Perrys, Helton began crying.

“He just said ‘I need to be saved’ while he was crying,” Perry recalled.

Her husband heard that and pulled the truck off to the side of the road. He taught him how to pray to accept Jesus Christ into his heart.

Helton points to that truck stop as the turning point. Kimberly Perry agrees.

“I really cherish that moment,” Helton said. It was one of the best moments of my life.”

Look where he is now. Woulda? Helton will walk one day as the first high school graduate of his immediate biological family.

Coulda? The three-star IOL has potential to be a standout player in a Power 4 conference. Georgia coach Kirby Smart has already told him it will be hard to keep him off the field.

Shoulda? “Z” shall now have the opportunity to earn a college degree at one of the top 20 public universities in America.

“That prayer has definitely been answered,” Helton said. “God gave me two people in my life that was together that know how to love kids.”

Helton looks back at his tenth grade year when the Perrys brought him into his home. He had so much opportunity through football and yet felt constrained by his circumstances.

He acknowledges that he wasn’t getting the attention he craved.

“I don’t really call those days a low moment,” he said. “It was just a storm that I had to get through. I cherish everything. I am grateful for every moment that happened in my life.”