Haiti native Claudell Louis makes leap from rest-home staffer to NFL

5:58 PM ET

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Visions of future NFL grandeur aren’t dancing in Claudell Louis’ head as the 6-foot-5, 294-pound undrafted defensive lineman stands on the edge of the Buffalo Bills’ practice field Tuesday after his team’s second organized team activity of the spring.

On a cloudless, 70-degree afternoon near Buffalo, his thoughts go back to a much darker day, perhaps the darkest in the history of his native Haiti: Jan. 12, 2010.

Just before 5 o’clock that evening, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked the island nation to its core. Hospitals crumbled, homes were destroyed and by the time the more than 50 aftershocks ended, an estimated 100,000 people had died. The poorest country in the Americas, and one of the poorest in the world, was largely reduced to rubble.

Defensive end Claudell Louis finished the 2015 season at Fresno State as an honorable mention All-Mountain West selection, drawing the interests of NFL scouts. Eugene Tanner/AP Photo

After spending the first 12 years of his life with his father in Haiti and visiting his mother in the Miami area each summer, Louis and the rest of his immediate family moved to the United States in 2001. He graduated from Boynton Beach (Florida) Community High School, and by Jan. 12, 2010, Louis was working a wage job for a retirement home in the area when he first heard news of the devastation about 700 miles away in the Caribbean.

As Louis watched the initial reports emerge on television, he and his family tried to reach relatives in Haiti. No luck. The already-shoddy communications infrastructure of the country had been wrecked by the quake. When Louis was able to connect on the phone, all he heard was screaming from family members as he and his parents tried to ask what they could do to help.

Louis soon learned that an older cousin named Ralph was lucky to be alive. His cousin was in a school when the tremors began, and about “10 or 20 seconds” after Ralph escaped, the building completely collapsed. Family members of Louis’ old friends from school and church lost their lives in the chaos of the quake, he recalled Tuesday.

And now, Louis wants to return to Haiti for the first time since he left the country 15 years ago.

“Hopefully soon,” Louis, who speaks with a slight Creole accent, said Tuesday. “Because I want to. Because with the advantage from the NFL, you could start and help a lot of people back at home. Because that’s the plan for me, to help back at home.

“I would probably start with an orphanage. Help all the little kids. Use myself as an example because I was born and raised …

continue reading in source espn.go.com