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Don Carey isn't a star on the Lions, but he is an important player with an inspiring message.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

ALLEN PARK -- Imagine your father walking out on you before your sixth birthday. Imagine your mother getting a second job cutting open dead people in the middle of the night to put food on the table. Imagine being so broke, you had to wear your sister's hand-me-downs.



Imagine being bullied in school, and feeling like no one cared.



"I used to write poems," special teams ace Don Carey said, "wishing I could die."

Carey has long been one of the most thoughtful players in the Detroit Lions' locker room. He wrote a weekly column last season, and this year is undertaking an even more ambitious project.



He's writing a book.

Carey, nominated last week as the Lions' Walter Payton Man of the Year because of his work in the community, was thinking during training camp about ways he could use his life and struggles to help motivate others, especially kids. So in between practices and film sessions and games and road trips, plus attending graduate school, he began penning a kind of motivational memoir.

Four months later, he's scribbled more than 24,000 words about his life and the lessons learned. "It's Not Because I'm Better Than You" is already available for presale at Target.com, and is due out Oct. 15.

"He's a guy that does have, I think, a unique story to tell," coach Jim Caldwell said.

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Don Juan Jesu Carey III was born in Grand Rapids on Valentine's Day 1987. He is named for his father, and his father's father, which makes it purely coincidental he entered the world on a day so synonymous with his name.

He grew up on Grand Rapids' southeast side with his mother, two sisters and a cousin his mother adopted. In a family of women, he looked up to his father. Don Juan Jesu Carey II was a talented chef, and goodness, could he ball. He never attended college, but was a legend on the playgrounds and actually drew the eye of an NBA scout at a Gus Macker tournament.

He was offered an NBA tryout.

But he never showed.

"Once those drugs catch your mind, man," Carey said, "there's not much else you can do."

Don II began drowning in drugs and the street life. He's been in a jail cell more times than his son can remember, or at least is willing to admit. And then one day, he walked out on the family, leaving behind Karen Robinson to raise four children alone.

Don III was 5.

Times were tough. Robinson juggled jobs to provide for her family, including taking an overnight shift cutting open eye balls on corpses. There wasn't a lot of money to go around, so the kids shared everything, including clothes. That's when things got really interesting for Don III, the only boy in a house of women.

He was teased mercilessly for having old sneakers and weird clothing. For not fitting in. He had a strong mother, but craved a male role model, someone to talk stuff through, to make him feel like he was OK. But he felt isolated. He felt alone.

And the reminder of the neglect was never far. His father moved into a house down the street from his school, and just two houses from the babysitter. So he would see his father from time time. But his father wanted nothing to do with him.

Things got bad.

"Around like 8 or 9, I used to write poems wishing I could die," Carey said. "It was pretty sad. I laugh at it now because I would take 'em to school. One time I was writing a poem in class, and my English teacher comes up and reads it. I mean, if I had done that now, they would have taken me out of the house. But back then, she was just worried about me, and she told my mom and my mom would come talk to me about it.

"But it was just the way I felt. I felt like I wanted to die. I felt like I was worthless. I had this burning question of, 'What is wrong with me that my daddy didn't want me?'"

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Carey would look one way out the house, and see the neighbor playing with his son. Then he'd look the other way, and see a single father doing the same. Then he'd go to school or the babysitter's, see his father doing his thing in the street, and just feel rejected

Rejection eventually turned to hate.

"I had hate for my mother's struggle," Carey said. "I had hate for my father not being there. Hate for being laughed at because I had the same pair of shoes for two straight years. Hate for (the fact) my older sister had to give me her clothes. I was looking at the guy next door, like, 'Dang, why can't my daddy be like that?'"

Lions safety Don Carey makes a tackle during a game against Philadelphia last year.

Carey, though, refused to let it define him. He channelled his hate, his feelings of abandonment. He wanted to be a man of principle. Everything he did began to have purpose. He became a high achiever in the classroom, and an over-achiever on the football field.

He started at quarterback as a freshman at Grand Rapids Central in 2000, before moving with his family to Norfolk, Va., when his mother met a man in the U.S. Navy. He became a star in the classroom at Booker T. Washington High, and despite average size, on the field as well.

He wound up playing at Norfolk State because he had no big-time offers. He became a four-year starter, even though he stood 5-foot-nothin' and 170-somethin'. He was selected by the Browns in the sixth round of the 2009 draft, even though he was never once named first team in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

Carey is not the fastest player. He is not the biggest or the strongest. He hailed from a school that's produced only one draft pick -- him -- since 1996. But he'd made it to the NFL anyway.

"(The hate) was the driving force behind why I wanted to be successful, to tell you the truth," he said.

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Carey endured a turbulent start to his pro career, a dream that became something of a nightmare. He was injured just weeks after getting drafted and cut before his first training camp even opened. He found new life in Jacksonville in 2010, becoming a starter for the first time, but grew complacent with his expanded role and found himself on the roster bubble only a year later.

"I began to feed into the mantra, 'He's a talented player. So much potential. This guy can do so much here,'" Carey said. "For whatever reason -- I think, immaturity -- I started buying into that. And the work ethic that I had kind of died down. Because I felt like I had arrived."

Training camp rolled around in 2011, and weird things started happening. He wasn't repping as much with the starters. Then he wasn't playing much in preseason games. And sure enough, he got the call every player dreads in late summer.

NFL teams don't call you if you made the team. They only call if you got a pink slip.

"I got the call," Carey said. "I'm like, 'What the heck?' I go in and meet with the coaches, and as I'm walking out -- well, escorted out, actually -- I see another scout bringing another DB in just as I'm walking out."

Carey sat in his car and vowed to himself, never again. And that was a lesson to Detroit's gain.

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He doesn't throw touchdowns, or catch them, or run for them either. He doesn't kick a ball real far or hit a quarterback real hard. He doesn't even play defense much these days. But he has found a niche in Detroit as a gunner, and a damn fine one at that.

Detroit's Don Carey lays out Dallas' Cole Beasley during a playoff game in 2014.

Carey led the NFL last year in solo special teams tackles, despite being doubled on nearly every punt. He has another eight special teams tackles this year, and that hardly paints the full picture. He's also drawn four holding calls while beating perpetual double- and occasional triple-teams.

"I tell the fans, don't watch the ball when we punt," special teams coordinator Joe Marciano said. "Watch Don Carey beat a double team, because it's somethin' else."

And that's really saying something, when your punter is Sam Martin and he's currently netting more yards per attempt (44.6) than by anybody in any completed season in history. (Though it's worth pointing out, Johnny Hekker is actually edging him this year at 46.1.)

In other words: Detroit's punt team is flipping field position at historic rates. But while a big-legged punter such as Martin is sine qua non, he needs guys to shag those balls too. Johnson Bademosi is one of the best. And Carey is one of the best Marciano has ever seen.

"He's as good as there is out there," Marciano said. "I would say this: I wouldn't say there's anybody better than him. Maybe there's other guys as good as him, but there's no one better."

What's impressive is, Carey is doing this while being older than most of the guys he lines up against, and slower, and weaker. And there are almost always two of them.

Ultimately, that is the point he tries to make in his book, appropriately titled "It's Not Because I'm Better Than You." He writes about his path from a single-parent home in Grand Rapids to the NFL, the challenges he encountered along the way, and how he overcame them, hoping it gives the next generation a roadmap for how to succeed regardless of circumstance.

"People are always shocked when they see me come in and I'm an NFL player," Carey said. "If you see me on the street, I look like a regular guy. And I'm always asked the same question: How did I make it to the NFL? What was different about me and all those types of deals.

"And I tell everyone the same deal. It's not because I'm better than you. It's just because I worked hard, and I lived with principle."

That's why Carey pulls his car over on the side of the road to jot something down, or takes his phone into the hot tubs and cold tubs after practice so he can write. It's why he makes the time between attending graduate school (he's learning Greek right now) and raising his kid and dropping in on one of his countless endeavors in the community -- as well as, you know, actually playing NFL football -- to tell his story.

He's hoping people -- kids -- will imagine what it's like being Don Carey, and know whatever they're going through isn't so bad.

"I want them to think, 'If he can do it, I can do it,'" Carey said. "That is what I'm hoping and praying people get from it. 'If that guy can do it, I can do it. It's going to be OK.'"