Former foster student donates $42,500 to the high school that changed his life
SEATTLE — When James Abbott pulls at the threads of his childhood memories, he describes one in particular like a scene from a movie.
“A car comes up, you are told to get in the car, and the car drives away. The last picture you have is your mom on the porch crying.”
That was the moment when Abbott, who is now 60, left his family and entered foster care.
Abbott, who grew up in Snohomish County, Washington, spent most of his high school years with a foster-care family. He was a computer geek in the 1980s, spent his career as a certified public accountant in the 1990s and has worked for Microsoft since 2001. Now, he’s giving back to the high school he says changed his life with a $42,500 donation to the Mukilteo Schools Foundation, the majority of which went to Mariner High School, in Everett, Washington. Microsoft added to his gift with an additional $38,000.
Most of the funds will help pay for low-income high schoolers to take college classes for credit; the remainder will go to the district’s foundation and ACES High, an alternative high school.
“I wanted to pay back Mariner for the opportunity they gave me,” he said. “And I wanted to help foster kids, like I was.”
The donation is the largest Mariner has seen in many years, said principal Nate DuChesne. It will benefit students with backgrounds similar to Abbott’s. About 12 foster students attend the school and 65-70% of the student body is low-income.
Only about 20% of foster youths who graduate from high school go on to college, compared with about 60% of high school graduates overall, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trust. Foster youth who do go to college are much more likely to drop out, the report says.
Abbott was born on a military base in Japan, and he was 10 when his father retired from the Navy and the family settled in Washington. His father struggled with alcoholism and often could not pay the rent, Abbott said. They moved around when landlords kicked them out.
Early in his sophomore year, a family friend called child welfare workers, and soon after a representative showed up on his doorstep.
“I just got in the car and away we went,” he said. “At the time, it didn’t seem painful. But now, it’s quite painful.”
A foster family in Everett took him and one of his brothers in, and he enrolled at Mariner. He was the new kid — but he kept up with tennis and made friends. He hung out with a crew of kids who liked academics and influenced him to keep his grades up. He also became close with several teachers.
After high school graduation in 1978, Abbott enrolled, then quickly dropped out, of Washington State University. At Boeing from 1979 to 1981, he worked a graveyard shift building specialized airplane tools while taking math and other courses at Everett Community College during the day. When he was laid off from Boeing, he soon found other opportunities: After seeing the 1983 science fiction thriller “WarGames,” he bought a $3,000 Apple computer system and learned to use it.
He finished a degree at Everett, then studied accounting at Central Washington University. He later became a partner at an accounting firm. He’s since worked in various departments at Microsoft, and now lives in Port St. Lucie, Fla., close to his mother. He’s reconnected with his siblings, he said, and also made amends with his father, who passed away in 1998.