Freddie Figgers had been found next to a dumpster in rural Florida when he was still an infant.
When he was 9 years old, he was given a computer and soon developed a love for technology. Now, at 31, Freddie is an entrepreneur and telecoms millionaire.
He said in an interview:
"Don't let your circumstances define who you are."
Freddie asked his father, Nathan, about the circumstances of his birth when he was 8. He still remembers his response:
"He said, 'Listen I'm going to shoot it to you straight, Fred. Your biological mother, she threw you away, and me and Betty Mae, we didn't want to send you through foster care and we adopted you, and you're my son.'"
He continued:
"When he told me that, I was like, 'OK I'm trash,' and I felt unwanted. But he grabbed my shoulder and he said, 'Listen, don't you ever let that bother you.'"
Nathan, was a farm worker and was in his 50s when he found him in 1989. They lived together in Quincy, North Florida.
Nathan had already fostered a lot of children, but he and his wife, Betty Mae, decided to adopt Freddie when he was only 2 days old. Although children in Quincy could be rough, Freddie says that he received lots of love growing up.
He says:
"Kids used to bully me and call me, 'Dumpster baby,' 'Trash can boy,' 'Nobody wants you,' 'You're dirty.' I remember getting off the school bus sometimes and kids used to just come behind and grab me and throw me in a trash can and laugh at me."
The children also made fun of Nathan who was waiting to pick up his son at the bus stop. Freddie remembers the other kids saying, 'Ha ha, look at the old man with the cane'.
Freddie viewed Nathan as his role models, saying:
"I saw my father always helping people, stopping on the side of the road helping strangers, feeding the homeless. He was an incredible man, and for them to take me in and raise me, that's the man I want to be like."
Nathan would take Freddie for a drive every weekend to look for useful things that were thrown away. But Freddie, being fascinated by technology, always kept an eye out for a computer.
Freddie says:
"It's an old saying, 'One man's trash is another man's treasure,' and I was always fascinated by computers. I always wanted a Gateway computer, but at that time we couldn't afford one."
One day, Freddie finally got a computer from Goodwill, a second-hand shop. It was a broken Macintosh.
He says:
"We persuaded the sales associate and he said, 'Hey, I'll give it to you for $24,' (£17), so we took the computer home and I was just so ecstatic. When I got it home and it wouldn't come on, I took the computer apart. As I was looking in it I saw capacitors that were broken. I had soldering guns there and I had radios and alarm clocks, so I took parts out of my father's radio alarm clock and I soldered them into the circuit board."
After the computer switched on, Freddie realised that he wanted to pursue a career in technology.
At age 12, Freddie's skills started being recognised by others and he soon began working in repairs of broken computers at his school's computer lab.
A few years later, Quince required a programming system to check the town's water pressure gauges. The company that had taken on the project was advertising a $600,000 payment for the one who would develop the program. A city manager soon noted that Freddie would be a good candidate for the job. Freddie remembers him saying:
"'Hey, Freddie's a computer dork, he could probably help with this.' So I said, 'Sir, listen, if you give me an opportunity, I could build the same program. So he gave me that opportunity and I built that program exactly to the specifications that they needed. I didn't get paid $600,000, I got my regular pay cheque and went home."
Freddie was 15 at the time and decided to leave school in order to dedicate all his time to technology.
He soon built his own computing business, making significant innovations in technology.
Now, aged 31, Freddie Figgers is a millionaire.
[Based on reporting by: BBC]
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