By RANDY COVITZThe Kansas City Star
Alex Smith spoke with conviction and brought the energy it takes to play quarterback in the NFL.
The venue was not Candlestick Park, his home field at the time as the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback. Nor was it Arrowhead Stadium, which will be his new home starting with the 2013 season.
It was at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in midtown Kansas City. Smith, then in his sixth season with the 49ers, spent a March 2010 weekend here and shared his dedication to helping older teenagers as they “age out” of the foster care system and have nowhere to turn as young adults.
He outlined how The Alex Smith Foundation had put 23 foster teens through college in his hometown of San Diego and helped them transition to adulthood.
And now, thanks to Smith’s encouragement, a similar program is working in Kansas City.
“It was quite incredible to see and hear the passion he had for this issue and to see the time and commitment not only he devotes, but his entire family devotes, to help youth be successful,” said Denise Cross, president and CEO of Cornerstones of Care, a local organization that works with foster children.
“By him sharing their success and their model, we were able to adapt to the needs here in our broader Kansas City community and are working to make that happen.”
So before Smith even takes a snap for the Chiefs once a high-profile trade with San Francisco is consummated next week, he already has made an impact on Kansas City.
Cornerstones of Care, though a partnership with Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church, has 12 youngsters headed for schools such as Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley, MCC-Longview and the University of Central Missouri.
Smith’s success in Kansas City ultimately will be measured by whether he leads the Chiefs to their first playoff win in 20 years, and perhaps their first Super Bowl in more than 40 years.
But his experience assisting foster children at risk has helped prepare Smith for whatever adversity he encounters, be it fans booing him earlier in his career, coping with injuries or dealing with the unkindest cut of all: being benched in favor of a younger player after leading his team to the NFC championship game in the 2011 season and a 6-2 start in 2012 before he was sidelined because of a concussion.
Football, too, played a major role in the man Alex Smith would eventually become.
“You wouldn’t know it, but he’s a very tough-minded kid, and that’s half the battle as a quarterback — having that mental toughness,” said Gordon Wood, his high school coach at Helix High School.
Growing up comfortably in San Diego, Alex Smith never realized what hardship was. Not financial hardship, anyway.
He was the son of professionals, the third of four children, all of whom were accomplished athletes. A finalist for the Heisman Trophy at the University of Utah, he was the first overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft by the 49ers, a status that would provide a $49.5 million payday.
Shortly after the 2005 draft, Smith and his mother, Pam, who works in health and human services in San Diego, visited San Pasqual Academy, a high school of 135 students, all of them foster children. Smith wanted to congratulate the school’s football team, which had recently beaten La Jolla Country Day, a tony private school, for the eight-man California Interscholastic Federation football championship.
His outlook on life would never be the same.
“Alex met a lot of these kids who were 17, 18, getting ready to be out of the system,” Pam Smith said. “Kids at that point are pretty scared. … They wonder, ‘What am I going to do? … Where am I going to go?’ You’re 18 years old, now you’re on your own, you’ve come from a dysfunctional family, you’ve been in a bubble of foster care. It’s a pretty daunting future.
“Alex was facing his own daunting future. But Alex is the first to say he’s the opposite of a foster kid. He came from a very stable family, lots of extended family … aunts, uncles, cousins. … He could not imagine kids not having that. That triggered his interest.”
Within a year, Smith, who wasn’t available to speak for this story, had established The Alex Smith Foundation. The charity raised nearly $840,000 during 2008-10, Pam Smith said, for scholarships and grants to send foster teens to college through the Alex Smith Guardian Scholar Program at San Diego State University.
Smith not only has shared his vision in places like Kansas City, he has testified at California’s Capitol in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C. In 2007, he testified before the California General Assembly in favor of a bill that has extended support for foster kids beyond age 18.
In an informational video produced by California College Pathways, a program that provides resources and leadership to college campuses and community organizations, Smith emphasized that foster children are everyone’s responsibility.
“I don’t think anyone in this world can make it on their own totally,” he said. “I don’t care how fortunate you are or how much talent you have — who you are. You have to have some sort of support.”
Alex Smith comes from an athletic family.
His father, Doug, played football at Weber State in Utah and went into coaching before serving as principal and director of Helix High.
Alex’s uncle, John L. Smith, also played at Weber State before becoming a head coach at several Division I schools.
Alex’s older brother, Joshua, preceded him as the starting quarterback at Helix, and his two sisters, Abbey (Cal State Northridge) and Mackenzie (University of California, Davis), played college soccer.
He was no stranger to the life lessons that sports can impart.
“Alex learned an awful lot from his dad,” Pam Smith said. “He was always a strong student of the game.”
Teaming with future NFL star running back Reggie Bush, Smith led Helix to a 25-1 record in their final two seasons. But while Bush had his pick of colleges and chose the University of Southern California, Smith was lightly recruited.
Smith’s choices came down to Louisville, where his uncle John L. Smith was the head coach, and the University of Utah, a campus situated not far from his family’s roots in Idaho and northern Utah.
Alex was leery of how long John L. Smith would remain at Louisville and chose Utah in the fall of 2002. Sure enough, his uncle moved on to Michigan State in 2003.
Because of Helix’s strong college preparatory program, Alex Smith arrived at Utah with so much advanced placement credit that he registered as a junior academically and picked economics as his major on the first day he arrived on campus.
He was backing up incumbent quarterback and close friend Brett Elliott when the 2003 season opened. In week two, Elliott suffered a broken wrist on the final play at Texas A&M, and Smith had four days to get ready to start a nationally televised game against California, a team led by future Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Smith led Utah to a comeback victory.
“He put in a lot of extra time studying the offense and knowing exactly what to do,” said Dan Mullen, the Utes’ quarterback coach at the time and now the head coach at Mississippi State.
From that point forward, the starting job at Utah belonged to Smith — and the cold reality of an injury determining a starting role would stick with him in his final season with the 49ers.
Smith went 22-1 as the Utes’ starter, a stellar run capped by a 12-0 season in 2004 and a 35-7 win over Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl.
He graduated in two years, worked on his master’s degree during his third year at Utah and then decided to enter the NFL Draft with a year of college eligibility remaining.
Being the first overall pick carried an immense burden. Smith played in nine games as a 49ers rookie, starting seven, and threw one touchdown pass with 11 interceptions for a team that went 4-12.
“When I was young, I just tried to please everybody,” Smith said in 2011. “Especially being the first pick, I was, ‘Man, I’m going to have to prove it to everybody … the fans, my teammates, coaches … and I’m going to do it on every single play.”
After struggling through five up-and-mostly-down seasons, Smith finally came of age in 2011.
The 49ers hired former Stanford coach and NFL quarterback Jim Harbaugh as their head coach, but because of the lockout, the new coaching staff had just one day to meet the players and hand out playbooks.
While the players were unable to communicate with their new coaches because of the labor impasse, Smith took control of the team, hosting minicamps at San Jose State that some of his teammates called “Camp Alex.” When the lockout ended, the 49ers’ offense was ready for training camp and the season.
Smith led the 49ers to a 13-3 record, throwing 17 touchdown passes and just five interceptions. They beat New Orleans in their playoff opener but fell short of the Super Bowl with an overtime loss to the New York Giants in the NFC championship game.
When they finally reached the Super Bowl this past season, Smith was just along for the ride.
He was the NFL’s most accurate passer (70.2 percent completion percentage, 13 touchdown passes, five interceptions) before suffering a concussion on Nov. 11 against St. Louis.
Second-year wunderkind Colin Kaepernick replaced him, and even when Smith was cleared to play after missing one week, Harbaugh stayed with Kaepernick all the way through the 49ers’ Super Bowl loss to Baltimore.
Smith took the high road the entire time, harking back to his days at Utah.
“That’s how I got my start in college. It was no different,” Smith said during Super Bowl week. “Guy in front of me got hurt … so it would be pretty hypocritical to be upset about it. It’s just the nature of team sports.”
The emergence of Kaepernick made Smith expendable, especially because his contract guaranteed him $8.5 million if he was on the 49ers’ roster on April 1. So the 49ers are dealing him to the Chiefs, where he will play in a quarterback-friendly offense directed by new Chiefs coach Andy Reid.
Smith will move to Kansas City with his wife, Elizabeth, and 21-month-old son Hudson. The couple’s second child is due in mid-March.
Here he will be able to continue his work with foster teens and possibly reconnect with Cornerstones of Care.
In Kansas City, Smith will be following a lineage of community outreach that includes former Chiefs lineman Will Shields, whose Will to Succeed Foundation has been another model charity.
Shields is already impressed by what Smith has done.
“I think it’s awesome,” Shields said. “It’s part of how they were brought up and have good people around them who have supported them and helped them do different things. And also being in the position to help people makes a big difference, too.”
Those connected to the Cornerstones program are counting on it.
“It sounds like he’s very family-oriented and has a big heart and cares about people,” said Tia, an 18-year-old at Hope Academy Charter school who plans to attend MCC-Penn Valley through the Cornerstones program.
Six months ago, Tia dropped out of school, but then she realized what her future might be like without an education.
“I want to major in human services,” she said, “because I want to help kids who are like me in foster care.”
