By Shelley Swift | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — Sometimes life comes full circle in the most unexpected ways.
Bruce Culbreth, the manager at the Greenfield Walmart, helped an emotionally fraught mom, Amber Shultz, find a missing dollhouse piece for her daughter the day after Christmas 2016.
Three years later, Culbreth and the woman’s son, Connor Shultz, a senior at Eastern Hancock High School, were honored for separate reasons at a nonprofit gala held in Greenfield.
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Seeing the stranger who lifted her up in a dark time in her life instantly brought tears to Shultz’s eyes.
She credits Culbreth for helping her not fall apart on a highly stressful day, when life was just beginning to throw more than her fair share of curve balls, which would include nearly losing her mother, seeing her husband diagnosed with cancer and supporting her son after a suicide attempt.
“What are the odds of someone who made such an impact on our family when our lives were so crazy being honored on the same night as our son?” Shultz said.
Life was indeed about to get crazy for Shultz on that day at Walmart three years ago, when something as simple as a missing dollhouse piece threatened to set the frazzled mom over the edge.
Already under the stress of knowing her mom was facing open-heart surgery and having spent endless hours by her hospital bed, the Morristown woman had skipped a family gathering on Christmas Eve to assemble a massive dollhouse her in-laws had bought for her 8-year-old daughter Abigail, who was 5 at the time.
Shultz was crestfallen when she realized a massive piece was missing, so her daughter would have to open a partially built dollhouse.
Determined to get the missing piece but knowing stores were closed on Christmas Day, she headed to the Greenfield Walmart on Dec. 26 hoping to secure the piece from another set. When a clerk told her the item was sold out, Shultz was fighting back tears.
Seeing her in distress, Culbreth walked over and asked if he could be of any help.
“I just lost it,” said Shultz, who realized no one knew she was crying over so much more than a missing dollhouse piece. Her emotions spilled over as Shultz told the manager about her mom, and about why she was so upset over the incomplete dollhouse.
Culbreth immediately sprung into action, Shultz recalled, and had his assistant start calling Walmart stores all over the state in search of a similar set. When one was located in Plainfield, he sent his assistant to go get it, and called Shultz back to the store to pick it up that same night.
“He literally sent the entire new dollhouse home with me. He said ‘Take this, make sure you have what you need,’” she recalled.
Flash forward to December 2019, to the Big Apple Gala in Greenfield put on by Elite Athletic Trend, a local youth-focused nonprofit created by former pro football player Junior Aumavae.
Shultz and her family beamed with pride as her son, Connor, 18, took the stage to receive the Donald E. Pope scholarship awarded to a senior who excels at academics, athletics and community service.
Then she saw a man she vaguely recognized take the stage to receive the Big Apple award, bestowed upon someone who goes above and beyond to help the community.
It took a few minutes for Shultz to realize she was looking at the Walmart manager who had helped her when her patience was being stretched to the limit on that December day three years ago.
When Culbreth walked down off the stage, Shultz approached him, again with tears in her eyes, and asked if he remembered her. He did. Tears started to fall from his eyes, too.
It was an emotional night for those who knew the Shultz family’s journey, which culminated with seeing young Connor receive a scholarship after turning his life around.
The year after his mom was blessed by a stranger with a hard-to-find dollhouse, Connor faced a tough year as a sophomore at Eastern Hancock High School. Grappling with depression and anxiety, he tried to take his own life on his 16th birthday in 2017.
After intensive treatment, the family helped get Connor back on track. By then, Shultz’s mother had recovered enough to move out of their home and into her own apartment.
“Then, three days later, we found out my husband had cancer,” Shultz said.
The mom of three worried it would cause her teenage son to backslide into depression, so she got him involved with Elite Athletic Trend.
As a three-sport athlete since his freshman year, Connor felt right at home in the program, designed to provide mentoring and teach kids life and leadership skills.
He’s been involved with EAT ever since his freshman year, and started serving as a volunteer coach for EAT’s Kid Fit program this past year, talking with students in Greenfield-Central, Mt. Vernon and Eastern Hancock elementary schools about fitness, nutrition and anti-bullying.
“Connor has grown exponentially from when we first started working with him. He went from thinking about taking his life to actually speaking life into kids,” said Aumavae, who loves watching kids grow and flourish in the EAT program.
Life has flourished for Shultz’s family as well. Her mother recovered, her son rebounded and excelled, and her husband, Clayton Shultz, was declared cancer-free in mid-May. Clayton is a longtime coach at the school, and the Eastern Hancock community rallied around him and the Shultz family during his illness.
As circumstances improved, the tears have come less frequently for Shultz, until she saw Culbreth on the stage that night at the Big Apple Gala.
After the two shared a hug that night, Shultz told Culbreth about what the family had been through since that December day he blessed her with a random act of kindness.
“I told him, ‘I wanted to let you know what I was going through when you helped me.’ He just said, ‘This is why I do my job, so I can help people in our community.’ He told me what a great young man Connor seemed to be and that it was great to see he’s doing amazing things,” Shultz recalled.
Now that great young man is headed to Anderson University to play football this fall, a future that seemed a far-off hope as he struggled just a few short years ago.
Shultz said part of her son’s dramatic turnaround can be attributed to his involvement with the EAT program, where he thrived in the program’s three focus areas: community impact, athletic excellence and academic excellence.
“We want to see a range of excellence within all three of those areas with our kids, and we’ve really seen that in Connor,” Aumavae said.
The Big Apple award that Culbreth won that same night is reserved for people in the community “who view children as the apple of their eye, who are big supporters for child development programs and supporting kids throughout the community,” Aumavae said. Culbreth certainly fits the bill, he said, working with local nonprofits like EAT to support local families in need throughout the year.
“It just makes you feel really good to do what you can do to make a difference in people’s lives,” said Culbreth, who lives in Franklin but likes to focus the community outreach he does from the Greenfield Walmart within Hancock County.
Shultz hopes her story of how Culbreth impacted her life, on a day when no one could have guessed why a missing dollhouse piece nearly sent her into a tailspin, will encourage others to practice more patience and kindness with one another.
You never know what someone else is going through, she said.
“When I met Bruce in Walmart that day I didn’t know if my mom was going to make it. In that moment, something as simple as tracking down a missing dollhouse piece was a huge deal to me,” she said.
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There aren’t many former National Football League players roaming around Hancock County, so Junior Aumavae gets his share of second looks.
At 6-foot-4 and 350 pounds, he doesn’t mind the attention, so long as it brings awareness to the sports-focused nonprofit he founded in 2016 to help kids.
Aumavae developed Elite Athletic Trend, or EAT, to provide local youth with athletic training, mentoring and life leadership skills by focusing on three key areas: community impact, athletic excellence and academic excellence.
Serving kids in kindergarten through 12th grade, the nonprofit works with students in Greenfield-Central, Mt. Vernon and Eastern Hancock schools, as well as Pendleton and Triton Central schools.
The nonprofit’s mantra is based on the common sports catchphrase, “Go Eat!,” which Aumavae himself used when playing pro football from 2010-2015.
“When we say ‘It’s time to eat!’ it means it’s time to go hard, time to give it all you’ve got,” said Aumavae, who played for the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets, and had brief stints with the Green Bay Packers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Washington Redskins.
His nonprofit encourages kids to give it all they’ve got through a variety of programs like athletic skills and endurance camps, a mentoring program and scholarship opportunities.
EAT offers a football skills camp to teach skills, strength and conditioning and a recovery program to help student athletes maximize their recovery time. The Kids Fit program is designed to mentor and develop youths through innovative athletic activities.
Next month, the nonprofit is launching a program working with youth at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, in an effort to transition them to better living situations.
All EAT programs focus on helping young people develop their character and leadership skills by pursuing academic and athletic excellence, said the group’s founder.
“You set that trend of excellence, you’re impacting lives forever. That’s basically what we’re here for,” said Aumavae, who lives in Greenfield with his wife, Jenna.
Armed with an infectious smile and outgoing personality, Aumavae traverses the greater Hancock County area networking with local businesses, schools and individuals in search of those who can help further the nonprofit’s mission, whether through donations, volunteer hours or mentoring opportunities.
As long as the conversation eventually turns to helping local kids, he doesn’t mind answering curious questions about his heritage or his days in the NFL. For the record, he was born on the island of Samoa, which, as many are quick to point out, is the same birthplace of wrestler-turned-actor Duane “The Rock” Johnson.
“I get that one a lot,” Aumavae says with a smile.
For more information on EAT, visit www.eliteathletictrend.com, email [email protected] or call 317-586-2252.
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