BOSTON — A man who overcame a broken foster care experience – who was profiled in Boston 25 News' Missing and Forgotten Series – delivered the ceremonial first pitch at the Red Sox game Monday night.
Steve Pemberton had a tough road from his birth in New Bedford to his graduation from Boston College and it’s now the basis of a book and a movie.
Pemberton spent his formative years in foster care and he says his story of escaping the system is one of defiance and survival.
It was that defiance that gave a then 16-year-old boy from New Bedford a chance in the world.
“They'd already taken my childhood, you couldn't have my life too,” he told Boston 25 News.
Pemberton was just three when he was taken from his mother, who was in a losing battle with alcoholism.
The biracial boy then bounced from one foster home to the next.
Eventually, he landed in a home with a family praised for taking in some 39 foster kids over the years. The abuse started the very first day.
College was a chance to finally make his own choices. It was ultimately a teacher who took Pemberton in until he went off to college.
Pemberton says it's so important to get his story out there because foster care system still has a lot of work to do to look after the children in its' care.
Pemberton is now the Chief Human Resources Officer at Globoforce. He's happy to be back in his home state and rooting for the Sox.
MORE: How a Mass. native overcame his broken foster care experience