Second chance merited

I am writing this letter because I believe there has been an oversight of one of Hernando County's best teachers, deputies and mentors. I know that as professionals in the workplace we all fall short of perfection sometimes.

Nevertheless, to put a man that has touched so many adolescent lives (mine included) under a microscope is not justice. This man, Deputy Rick Ruiz, has served this community with everything he's had for several years and to take it all away for a bad week or a few bad days cannot be justified.

I am now a professional basketball player in Europe, something that kids growing up playing at the park or even at Nature Coast aspire to be some day. I would have to dedicate a lot of my success to a man that Hernando County and Nature Coast Technical High School has seemed to forgotten.

I come back to Nature Coast and talk to the high school basketball players and give them encouraging words of advice, as well as shoot some hoops with them every once in a while. I do not do this for money or attention. I do this because I am giving back to a man (Rick Ruiz) who has made it clear to me that to have the power to change a life.

I am writing you this letter from Lapua, Finland, in northern Scandinavia, going out of my way for a man who has helped give me all the opportunity that I have today to do what I love. When people told me that I wouldn't make it to college or that I should give up because I would never make it off the streets of Spring Hill, this man told me to follow my dreams.

I have yet to talk to Rick Ruiz, but I know that he must be devastated that the county that he has worked so hard to keep clean is turning its back on him now. I don't ask that these things that he has done go unpunished or that just because you are a valuable part of the community that things be overlooked, but what I do ask is that you look at a man that loves his job and loves to come in every day and see students who respect and listen to him and ask yourself: Is the punishment fitting of the crime?

Rick Ruiz loves to coach high school basketball, and I don't think that he is a man who can be replaced. I certainly vouch for this man and he should be allowed to keep his job as school resource officer at Nature Coast. I was not forced to do this, I do not like to do this, and frankly, I don't like to write letters, but Deputy Rick Ruiz gave me a second chance, now it's his turn to receive one.

Kyle D Swanston

Lapua, Finland