By Phil Richards

It began in intrigue, with an invitation from Indianapolis Colts teammate and 16-year NFL quarterbacking veteran Matt Hasselbeck to join his mysterious "secret club."

How could tight end Dwayne Allen refuse?

How could he have known?

Allen joined. Club membership drew him in. It led him. It fed him. It taught him. It transformed him. It introduced Allen to its true leader.

He met Jesus Christ.

"It was a personal, private moment of just total submission," Allen said, joy suffusing his face and manner. "It was like, 'I can't do this on my own. I cannot. I've tried and I've failed over and over again. I want more to life than what I can bring myself on my own."

How was he to know?

When that Oakland Raiders safety hit him in midair during the Colts' 2013 season opener last September, it altered Allen's trajectory and when he hit the field, his foot stuck and his hip gave. His season was over as it was only beginning.

It was the worst of breaks. It was the grandest of opportunities.

"It really gave him a chance, as I would like to describe it, to lay down in green pastures," Colts Director of Player Engagement David Thornton said. "It was his chance to reflect and grow.

"It was transformational and it sparked a new passion for football and for giving. He lives to give. It's a different language now, that Dwayne speaks."

Allen underwent surgery on both hips. The stress fracture in his foot has healed. He feels great. He's at "126.7 percent," he said, and he can't wait for Monday, when the team's offseason workout program begins.

Allen hopes he will be a better football player this year. He knows he will be a better man.

'Chucky comes back'

Olivia Davis, Allen's mother, was fixing lunch that day when she was interrupted by a daughter's alarmed cry: "Mom, Mom! Something's wrong with Chucky!"

Davis ran into the dining room. She found her 15-month-old baby, Dwayne — "Chucky" to his family — pitched forward, face in a bowl of chips. Davis pulled Dwayne back. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Panic ensued, but the evidence was there to be found: pills scattered all over the floor. Chucky had been sucking the sugar coating off ibuprofen tablets. He had overdosed. Davis threw him in the car and rushed to the emergency room.

"He was DOA. He was dead on arrival," she said, horror in her voice more than two decades later. "They worked and worked and worked on him. They put him on life support. They pumped his stomach for an hour.

"I said, 'Lord, you didn't give me seven children to take one back. You told me No. 7 was my completion.'

"All of a sudden, I heard: 'Momma. Momma.' That's all I needed. I knew that God had a special purpose for him."

The transition

Allen was walking down the hall in Sanford High School in Fayetteville, N.C., when Wayne Inman, the school's first-year football coach, darted out of his office and cut off the robustly-muscled, 6-3 freshman.

Inman wasn't looking to change a life. He wanted to recruit a football player. Inman thrust a $10 bill toward Allen.

"Buy a bag of dope," he said, "or take a physical and come out to football practice."

Allen wasn't a bad kid, only an aimless one. He needed direction. He needed love. He needed a dad. His was absent. His had played no role in his life, and his life was poorer for it.

Allen had been suspended from school. His file in the principal's office was 2 inches thick. It had started in day care. He'd been repeatedly kicked out.

"How does a kid get kicked out of day care?" asked Davis, his mother. "He got kicked out every week. I'd have to stop work, go pick him up."

Allen had spent his middle school years in an alternative school for troubled kids. It offered no sports. He had never played football, a forgettable youth recreation league season as a chubby center aside. He played basketball, but he had no real outlet, no path.

Inman gave him both. He gave Allen football. He gave Allen himself. The middle-aged white coach gave the troubled black kid the dad he never had.

" 'Pops.' That's my dad. Pops raised me," Allen said. "He taught me how to dress, how to talk to people, how to shake someone's hand, how to look people in the eye, how to be proud of my intelligence.

"Really, he taught me how to be a man."

It didn't happen that day in the hallway, and it wasn't all Inman. He ducks the credit.

"Dwayne Allen made a decision one day: He wasn't going to be that guy anymore," Inman said, his rich, deep voice arising in the soft tones and smooth rhythms of the South. "He wasn't going to be that guy who cusses teachers out and slams doors and spends every other day in the front office.

"It didn't just happen all of a sudden. He's slipped along the way, and he'll tell you that. But he works every day to be a better person. I've just tried to be there for him.

"I'll always be there for Dwayne."

Called to lead

You could count on one hand the number of football games Sanford had won the three years previous to Inman's arrival. To turn the program, Inman needed athletes, and he needed leaders.

"Dwayne was a natural leader. I told him, 'You can take and lead a bunch of thugs to hell if you want to,' " Inman recalled. "Or you could lead a group of young men to a championship. It's which way you want to go."

The Bulldogs won the Two Rivers Conference championship for the first time in more than 20 years during Allen's junior year. He was their acknowledged leader.

His 'DREAM' job

Tarik Glenn anchored the Colts offense from his crucial left tackle slot for 10 seasons, 1997-2006, many of them at a Pro Bowl level. In the midst of that career, in 2001, he and his wife, Maya, founded "DREAM Alive," a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and mentoring at-risk Indianapolis kids.

The Glenns poured 13 years of sweat and effort into DREAM Alive. It was their life and their love. They were fully invested.

So when Glenn last year accepted a job as student-athlete development adviser with the football team at his alma mater, California, he needed a successor, and he wanted one who would be fully invested.

Glenn went to Thornton looking for a candidate.

"Without hesitation, I knew who his guy would be," Thornton said. "Dwayne has leadership written all over him. He has a passion for giving. He has a great passion for people and a great way of engaging and connecting with people.

"He has a way of making everyone feel special."

Allen is the seventh of seven. He's a momma's boy, and he has his momma's shoulder-wide smile, her enormous energy, warmth and appeal. He fills a room.

Glenn liked all of that. He liked that Allen shared his faith and his sense of purpose. Glenn grew up in inner-city Oakland, Calif. Allen came from Fayetteville's worst neighborhoods and he wanted to give Indianapolis inner-city youth what Inman had given him.

"This is not a charity act for him," Glenn said. "This is something he feels called to do and he has that special passion for this city's youth."

Allen, 24, became DREAM Alive's Player Executive last fall. As such, he helps preside over 25 "coaches" working with 120 youth, nearly all from homes below the poverty line. They are seventh- to 12th-graders at Shortridge Magnet Middle and High School and Harshman Magnet Middle School.

Allen walked out of his first meeting with "his kids" marveling: "Wow, there are a lot of little Dwaynes everywhere." He was invested from day one.

"Dwayne doesn't give us a little touch," DREAM Alive Program Director and coach Eric Mueller said. "He embraces the whole organization and gives us a bearhug.

"He's in the schools. All our kids know him. They love him. He's a kid magnet. He's an absolute kid magnet."

A new chapter

Hasselbeck's "secret club," which Allen joined last September, involved downloading a smart-phone application. "Our Daily Bread" provided a daily devotional reading that, on Allen's phone, daily went unread.

Club policy called for a $1 fine for every devotional ignored. Hasselbeck checked. Allen paid lots of dollars that went to a worthy charity until he got serious in late October. He began reading. His eyes were opened. So were his mind and heart.

When Allen began testing Hasselbeck, probing to see if he had read each day, Hasselbeck knew it was time. He gave Allen a book, "How Good Is Good Enough?" by Andy Stanley. It proved more than a daily read. It was a trigger, and a door.

Allen's intensely personal and transformative encounter with Jesus came the day he read the book, Jan. 8.

"Taking that step, submitting to Christ, was the most important thing I'll ever do because now I have a purpose," Allen said.

"On the outside, you're like, 'Dwayne, you're the best guy ever. I can't understand what you're talking about.' I had a lot of fun. I was able to help a lot of people, but again, I struggled with a lot behind closed doors. I struggled with pride, with other things that were really starting to tear me down and were really beginning to weigh on me.

"Christ was able to continue to call out to me. He never gave up. He was always calling out to me, wanting me to come home until I did."

Life began to make clearer sense for Allen. That $10 handshake? It was extended by a higher hand. The hip injury? It was part of the plan.

Tempered steel

Allen went to Vail, Colo., to have his hip surgeries performed by a renowned specialist. Momma's boy took along Momma and his beloved English Bulldog, Roxie.

He needed both.

Allen developed a post-surgery complication. Blood clots filled his lungs. His condition grew life-threatening.

Mom called friends and family. She called her pastor. He called his church members. Prayer went on the attack.

"I said, 'God, you didn't bring us all the way out here for me to lose my child,' " said Davis, a City of Fayetteville heavy equipment operator who worked three and four jobs to raise her seven kids alone. "I said, 'I know you have a greater purpose. Whatever it is, let it be done.'

"Dwayne was scared. I looked at him and I saw tears running down from his eyes, like, is this the end? I said, 'No. This is only the beginning.' "

The problem cleared up almost overnight. Allen recovered completely.

He led all NFL rookie tight ends with 45 receptions and 521 receiving yards in 2012. He lined up in tight formation, split wide and in the backfield. He was one of his team's most versatile and valuable players.

He is in full health after spending 2013 lying in green pastures. He's back. He hopes to be an even better player. He knows he will be an even better man.

Email Star reporter Phil Richards at phil.richards@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter at @philrichards6.