They said it couldn't be done.

Andres Todd was 13 class credits behind at the beginning of his senior year at Wenonah High School and had been suspended each of the four years he had attended the southwest Birmingham school.

He skipped class. Failed class. Always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and always got caught.

Andres was just 13 when his great grandfather died in front of him after having been shot during a robbery while the two were cutting grass in the Montevallo Gardens community. The 76-year-old Birl Jackson handed young Andres his phone and told him to call police. Todd froze and was unable to move. That would have an impact on the years to come.

There wasn't little hope he would walk with his graduating class. There was no hope.

But less than one year ago and seemingly out of nowhere, Andres got some unexpected, and unsolicited, help. A small group of Birmingham police officers stepped up, stepped in and took him "under their wings," going so far as to drive him to school in a marked police cruiser every morning for months to make sure he got there and got the job done.

Last week, Andres was honored at the school with a Wenonah High School Student Achievement award. Today, he will join hundreds of his classmates as he walks across the stage at Birmingham's Crossplex to receive his diploma.

"We're not just protecting, we're serving,'' said Birmingham police Capt. James Jackson. "It takes a village and he's a testament to that."

"I know people are going to be saying there's no way he should be graduating,'' he said, "but when they see Andres, people are going to say, 'That can't be nothing but God.'''

Last summer, Jackson approached the police department's school resource officers and asked for the names of three of their "most challenging" students. "Andres Todd stood out,'' Jackson said.

The captain told his fellow officers he was going to take Andres on a week-long trip to the Kids Across America camp in Missouri, a Christian program with a mission of encouraging, equipping, and empowering urban youth and their mentors through camping and education to impact their communities for Christ.

"We're always teaching our officers to engage the community and to mentor,'' Jackson said. "People said, 'You're crazy. This guy is always in trouble.' They really thought I was crazy for wanting to take Andres."

"People never see the serving side of what we do,'' he said. "If Andres' didn't see that, he may end up behind bars or worse and that's not what we want. Compassion is what drives me, drives so many of the officers."

Jackson approached Andres' paternal grandmother, with whom Andres lives, and said he wanted the teen to be a part of a group he was taking to the camp. Terry Todd wasn't sure what to think. "I said, 'Is it a cult?''' she said with laugh. "But Capt. Jackson explained to me that it would give him a whole new outlook on life and I thought it was a good thing. I just said, 'Please don't hurt my baby.'''

Todd said though her grandson always seemed to be in trouble, he was never a bad kid. Still, she worried. "You know, kids are getting shot and times are so bad,'' she said. "I didn't let him run the streets, but I just worried about him being so playful in the wrong places."

While Todd was excited about the possibilities of the camp, Andres' wasn't so sure. He'd never been out of Birmingham. He didn't even know Jackson or the other kids with whom he would be riding in a bus for 12 hours. There would be no family and, worse, no cell phone or social media for an entire week.

"I didn't want to go,'' he said. "It was the police, and I just thought it was going to be bad. Like a boot camp.''

The first stop en route to Missouri was at a McDonald's. Jackson asked Andres how he was doing, and what he was thinking. "He said, "I'm thinking about fighting these two guys,''' Jackson recalled. "I asked him why and he said, 'We're on the bus and I can hear their music coming from their headphones.'''

The second stop was at a Walmart. "He's going all over the store loading clothes into his basket and he doesn't have any money to buy them,'' Jackson said. "This is what he was. This was the challenge."

The first couple days at camp were rough. "You had to be a certain way and I wasn't acting that way at first,'' Andres said. "I had an attitude. But they kept talking to me and telling me what could happen and I started thinking that I could do something, be anything I wanted to be."

On the third night, Andres joined the other campers as they watched a reenactment of the crucifixion. Andres wept.

"You could see some things changing in him,'' Jackson said. "He said he wanted to be a man of God."

It was also that night that Andres talked about the death of his great-grandfather. He recalled he was listening to music and heard three gunshots. He thought the shots were part of the song. Then he found his great-grandfather slumped over in the truck. "I couldn't think. I didn't know what to do,'' Andres said. "It didn't put me on the right track."

Andres emerged as a leader at the camp. "He was a magnet for a lot of the kids,'' Jackson said. "They were just following him and you could see that he has leadership on his life."

Andres agreed that the camp changed his life, and maybe even saved his life. "I wasn't being the way I was supposed to be before I went on that trip,'' he said.

The officers' involvement with Andres' life didn't end when the week was up. Instead, they took him with them on Police Athletic Team trips - to Six Flags and white-water rafting - even though he wasn't a PAT participant. "We continued to mentor him. Where we went, he went,'' Jackson said. "We didn't put his business out there, he just blended in with all the other kids."

The family was still somewhat puzzled by Jackson's continued involvement. But Jackson was driven. "Somebody had compassion on me and somebody made themselves available for me, to mentor me,'' he said. "I told his grandmother this is what our department is about. If it was up to us, the jails would be empty."

School resumed in the fall and Andres still had a long, tough road ahead of him. "They said give it up, it's not going to happen,'' he said of the possibility of Andres graduating.

Todd was told the same story, especially when Andres got a couple of days in alternative school at the beginning of the year. "They wanted him to go to the dropout recovery program, said it was just no use but I said, 'No. I don't care how, but he's going to walk with his class.' They said no way. Every time I went back up there, they told me the same thing.'''

"It made me feel bad,'' Andres said. "It made me feel like I'd been messing up for real.''

Andres made a decision to focus. He promised he was all in, and that's when School Resource Officers Kenneth Knight and Tamieka Hall started picking him up every day to drive him to Wenonah. "We wanted him to graduate,'' Jackson said. "We're like, 'You're going to do this.'''

The teen buckled down and went to work. He took night classes, online classes and stayed late after school to finish his assignments. He found out about a month ago that he would be able to graduate on time. "I worked hard,'' he said.

"I'm very proud of Andres and everything he'd one and how he's changed,'' said his mother, Demeatress Green. "Miss Terry just stayed on him and did not give up on him like so many people had. They were just looking for him to be dead or on the news or in jail. Miss Terry wasn't going to give up on him and she wasn't going to let him give up on himself. I'm grateful that she has been able to be there for him during the times I wasn't always able to."

Andres said he was shocked when he was presented with the special achievement award at school. He was in the assembly and saw his grandmother there, and at first he thought he was in trouble again. "Then I heard my name and everybody was just hollering,'' he said. "I don't know how I felt but I felt some kind of way. I didn't cry, but everybody was crying around me."

After graduation, Andres said he is considering a career in construction or the U.S. Army. "I just want to thank everybody that believed in me and helped me. It means a lot that some folk, a lot of folk, believed in me."

Andres' will have a large section cheering him on at graduation, including those officers who have been there for him along the way.

"This story is for people who want to give up, who have no hope, who have been told they're not going to amount to anything. With God's help and people making themselves available, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you,'' Jackson said. "Andres will always be special to us. We plan to stay in touch and we will always be there to encourage him to stay focused and keep God first."