Committed to the Mission

October 14, 2025

“I’ve been in very tough situations, where I can relate to a lot of the youth,” Carreon said. I’m lucky to even be [alive].”

As a child, Carreon often got into trouble and was very hyperactive.  

“People would say I’m too hyper, I’m all over the place,” he said. “They said I had the devil inside of me.”  

Despite his behavioral challenges, Carreon wasn’t given the support he needed. So, he suppressed his emotions, making it difficult for him to express himself.

“I learned to keep things to myself, and those emotions would boil up,” he said. “I didn’t learn how to express my feelings. I feel like a lot of our youth learned something similar during their journey. I didn’t know that until I started working with them.”

Through years of self-reflection and learning how to adapt to situations in school, work, family, and with his peers, Carreon learned healthy tools to help him overcome difficult moments in life. He has applied those insights and earned wisdom when working with our youth by offering them encouragement and demonstrating healthy communication.

“I didn’t have the confidence, nor the guidance and support growing up,” he said. “I wanted to be that support system that I never had, for other people who have had similar challenges.”

Carreon’s road to greater self-awareness took an unexpected turn in 2020, when he was diagnosed with ADHD. It led to greater understanding of his own challenges and has allowed him to make changes.  

“After I got my ADHD diagnosis, I noticed a tremendous personal growth,” he said. I was getting in the best shape of my life, and I started learning a lot more about myself and was in a really good place.”  

As he ran to improve his own health, he channeled his energy into something that will help our young people. He had always considered the idea of running a marathon. The fact that more than 500 other athletes committed to running the Bank of America Chicago Marathon for the same cause felt like the perfect opportunity. Carreon was among several coworkers this year who participated in the event as Mercy Home Heroes, as the team of runners who raise funds for our mission through their marathon efforts is known.

The Mercy Home Heroes program has played a key role in helping prepare him for his first ever marathon.  “Mercy Heroes [has] a great program,” he said.” I’m used to running on my own. The running program has been something I can lean on to structure my runs throughout the week to maintain progress. But even more, the program brings a communal feeling to what normally is an individual activity.”

Bridging the internal and external experiences of running also fuels success. “Doing long runs with others who are on that journey as well gives you that additional motivation to overcome the roadblocks that come with running long distances.”

Mercy Home is grateful to our coworker Abraham Carreon and to our record field of 524 Heroes who took on the 26.2-mile challenge this October to help our young people build brighter futures.