Colorado Miners

DENVER POST  - Amid the fray of a Denver danger zone, inside a building once lathered with graffiti and gloom, hope is giving out high-fives. A building like this "saved my life," Randy Perkins said, and here in the Elyria area of north central Denver, Perkins provides a haven called the Colorado Miners Community Center. He took over the ravaged, empty building an autumn ago and now greets kids with high-fives, handshakes and hugs.

HUNGER FREE COLORADO - While the Colorado Miners youth program has been in operation since 2004, the Colorado Miners Community Center (CMCC) only opened its doors last August. The mission of Colorado Miners is “To inspire a sense of responsibility, self-worth, confidence and leadership within young athletes for themselves, their families and their communities.”

DENVER POST - "We have community service where two or three times a year the entire program, not just our team," Cooper said, "everybody will go out on a weekend, sometimes to a senior center, and we'll just help people do yardwork, clean up their houses, take them to and from appointments, things like that. . . . If kids don't do that, they don't get to play."

The Colorado Miners is a nonprofit organization working in a challenging part of east Denver. The people there teach great basketball skills and even better life responsibility skills.

As a fan, Randy Perkins is part supportive father, part basketball coach. As a parent, he's as supportive as they come.
"We talk every day," Gonzaga point guard Josh Perkins says of his dad. "We're best friends, same personality, we look similar. He's my twin pretty much."