AURORA, Neb. — The road to Andrew Rodriguez's house winds a treacherous path about 15 miles outside this town of just more than 4,000 people, roughly halfway between Lincoln and Kearney.

Unpaved and filled with curves, it leaves a traveler wondering if he's headed for a dead end. Or worse. Just when the trip seems futile, a rusty, red gate appears. And down a rudimentary drive to the left, it opens to an expanse of natural beauty.

Rodriguez shares the picturesque home — the trip to which is a metaphor for his existence — with his 34-year-old brother, sister-in-law and their three sons. Warm on the inside, full of photos, the banter of three boys and a prominently displayed poster of Ndamukong Suh, their house crowds the banks of the Platte River.

It's hidden from a world Rodriguez once knew, a world from which Eric Collazo saved his kid brother.

The Platte's water trickles through river ice today as Rodriguez, an 18-year-old offensive lineman, signs a letter of intent with the Nebraska football team. He was the first member of the 2010 recruiting class, accepting a scholarship 10 weeks before last year's signing day.

In the spring, the land around his home comes alive.

The three boys of Eric and Nikki Collazo, like seemingly every kid near Aurora, idolize Andrew. But to Titan, 9, Carlos, 5, and Cameron, 4, he's simply “Tio,” Spanish for uncle.

Together, they fish, hunt for frogs and play in the river, riding four-wheelers when it's dry or tubing downstream when the water's high. Andrew, 6-foot-6 and 300 pounds, often walks along the side — too big for the inner tube.

“It's paradise out there,” said Randy Huebert, Rodriguez's football coach at two-time defending Class B champion Aurora High School.

Rodriguez, in rare moments of reflection, can stand alone and listen.

There are no gunshots here. Only birds singing and the flow of the Platte as it echoes under a bridge north of their home. No drug dealers arguing in the streets. No sounds of violence seeping through the walls of an aging apartment building.

Rodriguez knows that noise.

“Kids around here in Aurora, they've generally got a couple parents,” Huebert said. “They're being taken care of and pretty well have it made. But Andrew's seen the other side.”

Shaped by his life experience, Andrew Rodriguez is now the biggest and brightest star in paradise.

Learning humility

Eric Collazo knows the sound of a bullet cutting through the air.

The second oldest of Myrna Castellar's six children, Eric grew up in New York City's Spanish Harlem, where Puerto Ricans, like his family, predominate.

There are worse neighborhoods in the city, but Harlem is no picnic. It sits a few blocks from the museums and brownstones of Manhattan's Upper East Side. In New York, though, the landscape changes quickly and trouble finds you; not the opposite.

Rodriguez was born there in 1991. By 2000, he and two young cousins lived with little adult supervision.

“I didn't go to school,” Rodriguez said. “I just got caught up in a bad situation.”

He spent time with big brother Eric. For both of them, fate arrived in the form of Nichole Sack. Nikki, as everyone knew her back home in Aurora, went to the big city with her forensic psychology degree from Doane to study at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

She settled in the same apartment building as Eric Collazo. A Nebraska girl of Mexican heritage, Nikki formed a friendship with Eric and took quickly to Andrew. She, too, saw the dark side of New York, once watching a man beaten in the street with a crowbar.

Her relationship with Eric grew before Nikki returned to Nebraska to care for her ailing parents. Eric stayed and endured the murder of two cousins and his best friend. Their first names remain tattooed on his right shoulder.

He moved to Camden, N.J., looking for a change. Andrew went, too, but it was no better.

Rodriguez learned to keep his head down and stay humble. It wasn't always easy. Once on a trip home from the store, he came across an armed man robbing a helpless drug addict. Rodriguez got caught watching. The gunman's eyes met his.

“I looked at him,” Rodriguez said. “He looked at me.”

The stare burned an image in his memory.

“There's a lot of things I try to forget,” Rodriguez said. “If you don't cooperate with people out there or if you talk back, there's going to be consequences. You learn to be quiet.”

In September 2003, Eric visited Nikki at the home in which they now live. It was built by Nikki's parents, Bill and Irene Sack, as a base for camping near the river.

Eric and Nikki began renovations to make it a permanent residence. Eric decided to move here and went back for 12-year-old Andrew to begin what would be a life-changing experience.

A big teddy bear

At first, Rodriguez didn't take well to the move.

“He'd gone through so much,” Nikki said.

He was an angry kid, but the security and stability of the family on the river helped. Rodriguez felt homesick for months. He slept with the lights on for three years. The rural quiet and darkness was foreign to him.

He needed a tutor to make up for lost time in school. Eric put him in sports right away. Rodriguez played on a traveling basketball team in the summer of 2004. In the fall, he tried football. Two years later as a high school freshman, he earned a spot on the Aurora varsity.

“You could tell there was a lot of raw ability there,” said Tim Huls, Andrew's first football coach who now is the athletic director at Aurora High. “We've tried to develop a mean streak so he could drive off the ball and move people. That wasn't his style at first.”

You see, when Rodriguez adjusted to Nebraska, his true personality surfaced.

“Kind of like a big teddy bear,” said Huebert, the Aurora coach.

As his confidence grew, an extraordinary side emerged. Rodriguez earned Aurora's first football scholarship from a major college since Jim Wanek signed with the Huskers in 1986.

But instead of getting a big head, Rodriguez remembered the humility ingrained on the streets of New York and Camden.

“I have personally witnessed him stand up for someone who's being pushed around or picked on,” said Karrie Wiarda, his 11th-grade English teacher. “That's kind of nice to see. He could very easily walk away and say, ‘Hey, life's going great for me.' But he doesn't.”

Nikki credits the accountability factor.

“People weren't held accountable in New York,” she said. “It's easy to be a loser if you don't have people looking over you.”

Plenty of people look over him in Aurora. When he cracked the windshield on his car by pounding it in frustration with his hand after a tough loss, Rodriguez made up a story at home. Nikki, who works as an administrative assistant at the Aurora Police Department, heard the real explanation almost immediately back in town.

Accountability turned to responsibility, which led to discipline and eventually leadership.

He kicked off a bowling campaign for kids in Aurora. He reads to elementary school students, delivers food for Aurora's Head Start program and talks to middle-school kids about good behavior.

Once, Rodriguez chastised a fellow student in class who got caught smoking marijuana.

Aurora's elementary, middle school and high school sit together on the west side of town. The whole campus attended the presentation in October of Rodriguez's jersey for the U.S. Army All-American Bowl.

He was the only Nebraska recruit invited to play in the game. The place went wild.

“I can speak from experience, because I have a seventh-grade boy, and he watches every move Andrew makes,” said Doug Kittle, principal of the high school. “When Andrew sees those kids, he's always going to pat them on the back, give them a fist bump or just acknowledge that they're there.”

‘A proud moment'

Huebert likes to talk about Rodriguez's zest for life.

“When he pops that smile out, it's just electric,” the coach said. “He's warm and genuine and loves it here.”

More than anything, Huebert said, Rodriguez has a spot in heart for kids. It comes, perhaps, from his background.

Of his three nephews, Rodriguez said: “They're just everything. I love those guys.”

Asked if he'd like to return to his old New York neighborhood and talk to kids if football affords him the chance, Rodriguez sits up his chair. His voice fills with energy.

“That's exactly what I want to do,” he said. “I want to show them that if I can do it, you can do it. Nothing is impossible. You can take yourself out of this place and do something that's right, and you can change lives.”

As for the people Rodriguez knew from his time on the East Coast, most sit in prison or sell drugs, he said.

Much of his family, including his and Eric's mother, remain in New York. She's in a “good place,” Rodriguez said. He's seen her a few times since the move west. In fact, Castellar attended the Class B title game in November.

Nikki said it was “amazing” to see Castellar's reaction upon walking into Memorial Stadium. Until that moment, she didn't understand the gravity of her son's status as a future Husker.

Rodriguez's father is absent from his life. Andrew treats Eric as his dad.

Despite Rodriguez's accomplishments, Nikki said she feels some regret for his removal from the place associated with his ethnic roots. Rodriguez does not speak Spanish. For now, he'd much rather serve as a role model for kids than as a hope for Puerto Rican football players, of which there are few.

“He's got deep things in him that he's not ready to express,” Eric said, “but he does feel it.”

Clearly, he's a mixture of diverse cultures.

“He really appreciates where he's at,” Huebert said.

When Rodriguez started last month for the victorious West team in the U.S. Army game, people in Aurora crowded around televisions to watch.

Imagine how they'll feel when he's playing for Nebraska. You could say the journey starts today, but that would be wrong. It began years ago. Still, today marks an important milestone on a trip that holds so much promise to reach great heights.

“It's a proud moment for Aurora,” said Wiarda, the English teacher, “a proud moment for anyone who knows him.”

Contact the writer:

402-444-1031, mitch.sherman@owh.com

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