A star is born at the corner of Montrose and Allen Parkway

Juan Carlos Restrepo is blowing kisses and shaking and shimmying at the corner of Montrose and Allen Parkway. He's on in-line skates, he's practicing his dance moves and, as usual, he's thinking about losing a few pounds and entertaining drivers stuck in traffic.

He waves, he wiggles. Then he freezes.

A middle-aged man in a large pickup has pulled up behind him, parked and climbed out.

By now the skater's brown eyes have doubled in size. What is up?

"We're so proud of you," says banker Craig Gentry. "Can I have your autograph? And a photo?"

For 15 years, Juan Carlos (he rarely uses his last name) and Houston drivers have shared a mutual admiration society, a sweet and goofy connection.

Except now, the stakes are higher and the audience larger. Videos of Juan Carlos posted on YouTube have gone viral. He has a fan club on Facebook (Montrose Rollerblade Dancer). In June, he starred on an episode of "America's Got Talent," and three of the four judges voted to send him on to the next level.

Round 2, and a step closer to the $1 million prize and an act in Las Vegas, will air in mid-July on KPRC (Channel 2).

The episode is already taped. Juan Carlos knows what happened but can't tell. He puts his finger to his lips and winks.

His first skates

"No negativity, darling," he says. "Move forward."

That's not a hint but wisdom he learned early in life.

Juan Carlos was born in the Colombian city of Medellin 49 years ago. He remembers his father as a batterer and alcoholic, and his mother, the long-suffering wife who died shortly before Juan Carlos' seventh birthday.

Friends and relatives tried to provide for the eight children left behind. A neighbor presented Juan Carlos with a pair of adjustable skates. He remembers a lot of pent-up energy and emotion and sometimes crying as he flew down a hill near his house.

"I loved those skates," Juan Carlos says. "I wouldn't take them off."

When he was 8 he was unofficially adopted by a Colombian aunt who had lost her own baby during childbirth.

Juan Carlos realized that he could be happy again. Even lucky again.

"She was a teacher. She loved me so much, and she made sure I was educated," he says.

Coming to Houston

After high school, Juan Carlos flew to the United States to visit relatives. And he was hooked on the people, the lifestyle, the opportunities, as he knew he would be. During his late teens and early 20s, he lived in several cities up and down the East Coast. One, New York, was too big, and one, Miami, was too foreign. What was the point of living in America, he asked himself, if he wasn't immersed in American culture?

He landed in Houston in 1989 and began working as a hairdresser. He moved to Arizona for a promotion and a raise, but he stayed only three months. Houston was home.

By day he juggled jobs and clients. In his spare time he worked as a visual artist, rescued injured animals, lavished attention on his own pets and cooked for friends.

Those delicious meals inspired him to return to skating. As Juan Carlos explains it, he looked at himself in the mirror one day in 1999 and saw he was getting a little "pouchy."

So he strapped on his in-line skates and glided around his urban neighborhood. He saw a lot of people exercising near Allen Parkway and Montrose, so he skated there.

Immediately, a group of women leaving work together rolled down their car windows.

"They were very beautiful and smelled of beautiful perfume," Juan Carlos says. "I love to entertain. I gave them a little shimmy and shake."

Closer to his dream

With that, a tradition was born. There may be better skaters in the city of Houston, but there's only one Juan Carlos. Sometimes he tells himself, when the weather is bad, "No skating today. Then, about 5 o'clock, my body starts to boil. It is dancing by itself."

As he works out he listens to music from around the globe.

"All of it is awesome," he says. "I even have some from Vietnam. It is very beautiful."

When he appeared on Round 1 of "America's Got Talent," he wore a shimmering red body suit and skate-danced to the old Nancy Sinatra hit, "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'."

When the show aired last month, friends and fans attended a watch party at MKT Bar that featured Juan Carlos on his skates, drinks named after him and a poster-size cake.

Tina Zulu, a local publicist who helped arrange the gathering, says Juan Carlos was a star before he ever went on TV.

"All he wants," she says, "is to make people happy."

Juan Carlos dreams of becoming a filmmaker. He dreams of life as an entertainer. Six months ago, those dreams might have seemed farfetched.

Now, Juan Carlos says, "the TV show has opened my doors big time. It has sparked me up. It has been like a firecracker in my life."

Whatever the future holds, he says, his home base is Houston and his urban neighborhood and the street corner at Montrose and Allen Parkway.

He has a standing date with rush-hour drivers.