CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Long before Strange Donuts founder Jason Bockman came up with strange names and ingredients for donuts, he was a troubled teen, bad news waiting to happen.
"Guns and drugs and robberies. All kinds of bad stuff," said Bockman, seated at the counter at one of his four donut businesses. "I was a criminal. A lot of it was because of drugs."
At the time, there was no reason to think Bockman would eventually attend college, study overseas and learn to speak Chinese.
"Most of my friends are either in prison or dead and I was right there, too."
Bockman said he dropped out of school in the ninth grade because he was repeatedly getting into trouble.
"I got arrested a lot. I faced a lot of time in prison," said Bockman. "The cops were looking for me, and like the end of eighth grade, beginning of ninth grade for some stuff that happened and I just didn't go back to school."
Bockman said a sympathetic judge and Big Brothers Big Sisters helped turn his life around, and the former ninth-grade dropout earned his G.E.D., attended the University of Missouri-St. Louis, followed by graduate school at Washington University where he had an improbable dream.
"We did case studies all the time and it'd be about Starbucks or would be about Monsanto or whatever, you know, these big companies. I would just kind of daydream like someday I want to have a company or do something that gets mentioned in one of these case studies."
Recently that dream came true.
"A few months ago I got contacted by Washington University and they said that they wanted to use Strange Doughnuts as a case study. And I was just like, sobbing, like in my kitchen," recalled Bockman. "I have to come up with new dreams now."
In an effort to pay it forward, Bockman has partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters for a scholarship foundation, Strange Cares, which provides scholarships to young people trying to improve their lives.
Once reluctant to share his story, Bockman said his life has become a case study on how to overcome mistakes and bad decisions.
"Sharing my story isn't about me anymore. It's about who I can help," said Bockman. "I’ll tell it to anybody who will listen."
That includes talking to a just-released prisoner he spotted at an airport. Bockman recognized the bag the man was carrying as the type of bag given to an ex-convict.
"I told the dude, 'Hey man, I carried that bag' and he's like, 'This bag?' I said, 'Yeah.' I said 'Are you scared?' He was like, 'I'm terrified. You know?'"
Bockman wanted to reassure the man there was hope to change his life.
"'I was where you are, I'm far from where you are now. Things can be OK, you know?' And I just said a prayer for the dude. We want to talk about justice or helping people but are too wrapped up in our own lives to really ever extend a hand and be sympathetic. That's why I do this."