Meet the ‘Boy Wonder’ who experienc ed football fame and homelessness

"[The worst thing about living homeless in San Francisco is] seeing people fall apart, seeing people succumb ... seeing people break."

That's what Perry Foster told KQED's Dan Brekke when the reporter encountered him outside his tent in March 2016 for a piece about San Francisco's crackdown on tent encampments. Foster expressed a self-assuredness that he could rise above "the break" so many of his fellow homeless residents succumbed to. But this past April he suffered an overdose, joining hundreds others who have died on city streets just in this past decade.

As Brekke learned, Foster's slide belied a Midwest upbringing that helped make him a football prodigy with scholarship offers and a likely NFL career ahead of him. Nicknamed "Boy Wonder" for his genius on the football field, his death came as shock to his teammates who had no idea of he had fallen on hard times — not to mention the homeless counselors and his fellow homeless residents, whom he impressed with his resolve. Brekke's profile of Foster reveals an extraordinary and turbulent journey from football star to life on the streets. While the contours of Foster's story are remarkable, his unlikely and dramatic slide into homelessness is unfortunately one that is not at all uncommon.