Blomgren never meant to unofficially adopt a second son, and feared she wasn't ready to parent a teenager. But she quickly realized she didn't have much choice; McDonald needed her. He needed support, discipline and love.
"I never got any of that at home," said McDonald, who lived with his mom and stepfather. "I had a mom that had her own troubles, too much to pay attention to me."
McDonald said he still experiences a strong, instinctive response to being yelled at, a product of being constantly berated. He also dealt with other forms of abuse, he said -- including simple neglect.
Blomgren cared. She just wasn't sure what she was getting into. As it became clear her house guest's stay would last longer than a few days, Blomgren discovered McDonald's troubled home life had manifested itself in several ways. He is unusually serious for a teenager, and not especially comfortable teasing and being teased by friends. He is also particularly eager to please, which made recruiting a burden because saying "no" to a coach was excruciating.
"Sometimes in recruiting, you almost have to be rude, because some of these recruiters are pretty pushy," Hopkins football coach John DenHartog said. "And being rude, that's just not Andre."
Being a good student wasn't Andre either, at the time. One year into high school, McDonald's grade-point average was below 1.0, he was already falling several credits behind a graduation track. Though McDonald was one of the most athletically gifted freshmen in the metro area, his future was far from certain.
Soon after McDonald moved into her house, Blomgren went to DenHartog for advice. "The first thing he said to me was, 'Andre has the potential to go all the way,'" Blomgren said, meaning graduate, play college football, even earn a scholarship, " 'but he's never going to make it.' "
Blomgren insisted upon changes. "I said, 'All right, if you're going to stay here, we're going to make sure you graduate. I don't care about football, but we're going to make you a good student,'" said Blomgren, who drove both boys to and from their schools every day. By his junior year, McDonald was bringing home report cards with nothing but A's and B's.
And he was still bringing them to Blomgren's house, an informal arrangement that essentially became permanent eight months after he left home, when McDonald's mother called him to say she was moving to Atlanta that afternoon. When he texted that information to Blomgren, she became frantic, because she had no legal standing as the teenager's guardian. The next day, officials at Hopkins arranged a conference call, with counselors and teachers gathered as witnesses, in which McDonald's mother verbally gave her consent for Blomgren to make decisions regarding his schooling, health care and other situations.
Just like that, Blomgren's two-person family was a trio.
"That's when I realized, well, I guess I'm keeping him. But by that point, I loved him like he was my own child. He's Tyrell's brother, in my eyes," Blomgren said.
"I'm really happy with how things are," said McDonald, whose mother and biological father are both in the Twin Cities now but remain on the fringes of his life. "This is what I've always wanted -- someone to be there when I do good things and correct me when I don't. It's nice to have somebody who cares."
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