Help Tim Get His Freedom and Fresh Start

In January 2024, I woke up at 8am to a stranger in my home. A young man named Tim had broken in, visibly in crisis, and we would later learn his medication had been wrong for him and he had been inconsistent taking it. I called the police out of fear. What happened next surprised me. Tim dropped to his knees and cooperated completely, and he was taken to a mental health facility, not jail.

Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, I came home after a long day of work and found Tim sitting in my bathroom. I grabbed my gun and started filming, prepared to defend myself, but again he dropped to his knees. This time I asked more questions, and this time I listened.

What Tim shared with me that night broke me.

He had run to my house after trying to escape his brother, who had used a screwdriver to break into his room after Tim locked the door trying to get away from him. My house sits on the highest hill in the neighborhood and is barely visible from the street. Even a car coming up the driveway struggles with the incline, so running up it on foot is a real hike, and the fact that Tim kept pushing through that to get to my door told me everything before he ever said a word.

When I finally asked him why he kept coming to my house, why he kept making that run, he said something that made me put my gun down, drop every wall I had, and ask him for a hug instead.

He said, “this place is safe.”

I completely shattered. I could not help but feel his pain, because I know what it is like to need a safe space so badly that you will do anything to get to it. I left America to find mine, and Tim was running up a hill in the dark just to feel what I flew across the world for.

He lost both of his parents back to back, his mother in 2021 and his father in 2023, both to illness, cancer and alcohol. Before they passed, there was already abuse in that home, and after they passed it got worse. His older brother became his legal guardian and inherited the family home, and Tim inherited a life no one signed up for, with no parents, no real support, and no way out.

That night, Tim’s brother showed up at my door demanding Tim come home and take medication or he was calling the police. I told him I had already called. Tim refused to leave with his brother and chose to wait on the police instead, and that told me everything I needed to know.

Before the police arrived, Tim and I prayed together. He told me it was the first time anyone had prayed with him since both of his parents died, and I made him a promise that night.

I have kept it.

Since then I have connected Tim with therapy and counseling, where we discovered his original medication was actually wrong for him, which is why he avoided it. He is now on the right medication, attending weekly therapy, and has been working a remote job consistently for over a year. He saves what he can, he does not ask for much, and he just wants his freedom.

I have since relocated to Southeast Asia, but Tim is still in that home, still under his brother’s control, still trying to become the man he so desperately wants to be with the odds stacked against him.

I cannot do it alone anymore.

This GoFundMe will give Tim three things he has earned, a car, an apartment, and a head start on his bills as he steps into true independence for the first time in his life.

A apartment & car is the goal, and every dollar goes directly toward Tim’s housing, transportation, and first months of living on his own. No money goes to Tim directly due to his history with substances, and all funds will be managed and allocated responsibly.

Tim is not a sad story. He is a young man who survived things most people will never understand, and he is still standing, still working, still holding on to a promise someone made him in the dark.

Help us keep it. He genuinely would be grateful for anything, so if you can’t give a share or a prayer would help him more than you know.