COSTA MESA, Calif.—When Rayshawn Jenkins was 12, he liked to walk house to house near his family’s home in St. Petersburg, Fla., knock and see if anyone answered. Then, if no one did, he would lift back his leg and—BAM!—kick the door in. Young Rayshawn wasn’t seeking out food or money. He wasn’t trying to take someone’s DVDs or CDs. He just thought it was fun. So he’d smash a door, move on to the next house, knock, smash that door. On and on.
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Rayshawn also enjoyed lighting cherry bombs and throwing them through the open windows of the homes of people he didn’t know. The explosions were electrifying. The screams were reaffirming. He equally dug coming up behind a stranger and smashing him (or her) in the back of the skull with an egg. Because, hey, who doesn’t relish smashing people in the skull with eggs?
Mostly, Rayshawn liked fighting. No, he loved fighting. In the James Park Apartments where he grew up on the city’s crime-infested south side, throwing punches was akin to breathing and walking. He’d wake every morning wondering, literally, “Who will I hit today?” And a solid 60 percent of the time, thoughts became reality. Rayshawn punched tall kids. Short kids. Older kids. Younger kids. Bullies. Once, he ran home from a nearby basketball court to tell his mother, Terry Byrd, that two of his siblings were involved in a fight. Without so much as flinching, Terry — enraged that her boy dashed from violence — slipped on her sneakers and marched Rayshawn back to the scene. She stepped into the middle of a circle of onlookers and said, calmly but with purpose, “This is my son. He’ll fight anyone here.”
Rayshawn was 12 and smallish. An older kid, 13 or 14, walked to the center, fists up.
“He was much bigger,” says Rayshawn. “I destroyed him.”
If all this seems unusual or abnormal to you, it doesn’t to Rayshawn Jenkins. Even now, sitting on the Los Angeles Chargers’ practice field on a recent sunny afternoon in Southern California, the second-year free safety — as gracious and accommodating as any professional athlete you might encounter — looks dumbfounded when I mention that neither my dad nor mom ever beat the living shit out of me.
“Not with a belt?” he asks.
No.
“A paddle?”
No.
“Damn,” he says.
“Damn.”
Photo courtesy of Rayshawn JenkinsThis is not the Rayshawn Jenkins story that’s supposed to be written.
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That Rayshawn Jenkins story — the one repeatedly spun during his five years at the University of Miami, and now as a professional — is the simple-yet-fun saga of a successful football player with 17 (yes, seventeen) brothers and sisters. And, in the name of writer-reader transparency, it’s the reason I initially came to Chargers camp two weeks ago, to talk to Los Angeles’ gregarious defensive back about being raised in some sort of Brady Bunch carnival mirror. So I sat down across from Rayshawn and opened with, “Can you name all of your siblings in age order?”
“Of course,” he replied, still wearing a blue jersey with No. 25 in white letters. Then, after a slight pause and a sip of water from a black bottle — “There’s Shomira, Charles, Ashanti, Chaniece, Arkeith, me, Charlisa, Elise, Keyon, Shay, Jontae, Alexus, Jaleyah, Kevary, Ronald, Soraya, Caira and … and …. um … eh … ah … Camora! Yes, Camora!”
The stuff was irresistible, and it would be easy for a scribe to smile, nod, follow with two or three more questions (“What’s your wackiest memory?”), then transition to Philip Rivers or Joey Bosa or Jenkins’ development as he approaches his sophomore season with the Chargers. That’s pretty much what we do in 2018 — quick tales, neatly wrapped and ribboned into tweets. That’s also how the NFL likes it. No mess. Just shiny helmets and smiling faces and big men signing autographs for their loyal, decked-out-in-$40-team-T-shirt fans.
Only Rayshawn Jenkins’ rags-to-riches story is messy. It’s not the cute and snuggly saga of a boy growing up with his siblings in bunk beds, dressing as Warrick Dunn for Halloween and gathering around the Christmas tree to sing “Jingle Bells” as presents are passed from adult to child.
No.
Rayshawn Sharodd Jenkins was born on Jan. 25, 1994, at Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, a stone’s throw from his parents’ small home on Eighth Avenue. At the time, Charles Jenkins and Terry Byrd were living together — a young, unstable, sorta-kinda-not-really-in-love couple (he was 21, she was 20) who met a few years earlier at a nightclub. Charles arrived in the relationship with three children (son Charles, daughters Ashanti and Chaniece), and Terry already had a 2-year-old daughter, Shomira. Together, they produced a son, Arkeith, a year before Rayshawn arrived. “Look, I come from a big family,” says Charles, who worked as a cook at a nearby Howard Johnson’s. “My mom had three kids, my dad had nine kids. It’s just how it went.”
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The product of an African-American father and Native American mother, Terry was known for walking here to there and there to here with a pronounced chip on her shoulder. At 5-foot-7 and 212 pounds, she was a stout woman with a murderous scowl, piercing brown eyes and a hair-trigger temper. She said little but emitted a warning that silently screamed Step off. One knew not to fuck with Terry Byrd. One knew not to think of fucking with Terry Byrd. “Never,” says Rayshawn. “It wouldn’t end well.”
Nine months after Rayshawn’s birth, Terry was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a weapon. She did no jail time, had another child with Charles (daughter Charlisa), then was sentenced to three years at the Jefferson Correctional Institution following a 1996 arrest for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Though Terry declined to speak with The Athletic, her family members confirm the arrest had to do with stabbing someone with a knife. “She’s crazy,” says Charles. “I’ve got like four cuts on me from her.”
Terry delivered the couple’s fourth child, a girl named Elise, as inmate No. 548169. During the incarceration, Rayshawn’s parents ended their relationship, and the children split their time living with their father and an aunt and uncle.
Then, when Terry was released on March 3, 1999, they moved with her to a small unit within James Park, a Section 8 community of approximately 150 apartments that was overrun by drugs and violence. She found a job doing telemarketing, and her five children, well …
“We lived unusual lives,” says Elise.
According to Rayshawn, he and his siblings slept on the floor and survived largely on a diet of hot dogs, instant ramen and macaroni and cheese. He insists that Terry wasn’t a purposefully bad mother, rather a young and immature woman on her own trying to steer her children through a rough-and-tumble world. “Mom,” he insists, “did what she knew.” That’s why, he says, she would regularly punch, kick and whip her offspring. Elise says her mother gave her “at least” six black eyes. Charlisa says she still has blank patches on her scalp from the swaths of hair Terry ripped out in moments of rage. In certain circumstances, Terry would have her children lie down, then — in shoes — stand on top of them. To inflict pain. “I don’t care what words people rely on,” says Charlisa. “It wasn’t tough love. It was child abuse.” Rayshawn says his mother would use one of three items to batter him and his brother and sisters — a switch, a broom or an extension cord. (Charlisa adds that, on occasion, she would also utilize the plastic rod from the window blinds.) “It wasn’t like we could make the choice,” he says. “She decided.”
If Terry found out Rayshawn misbehaved, she liked to — he recalls — wait it out. He might come home from school, tiptoeing through the front door in anticipation of viciousness. Instead, haunting silence. Inevitably, after a few hours passed, he would slip into the bathroom for an evening shower. “Midway through Mom comes in, holding the extension cord,” he says. “She’s in there with the cord. You’re wet, completely naked, and she’s swinging away. It hurts so much more. And your skin is breaking. And she’s hitting you hard.”
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One might think these stories are told through tears or gritted teeth. They are not. As he speaks, Rayshawn is laughing, giggling. So is Elise, now 21 and an amateur boxer. It’s sort of weird and sort of confusing, and neither seems to understand the optics. “If I was hit, I deserved to be hit,” Rayshawn says. “I caused it. I wasn’t listening.” They are basking in the sun following another Chargers practice, two young, good-looking, inquisitive and intelligent siblings spinning yarns as if they were glorious sagas of long-ago trophies and chocolate cake. Perhaps this is the byproduct of time elapsed and life working out. Perhaps, as Charlisa suggests via phone from Hampton University, where she is a senior sociology major and member of the women’s basketball team, it’s more suppressed memories. Whatever the case, the juxtaposition of past nightmare and modern joy is a peculiar one. “You can’t let things consume you,” Elise says. “We all have our histories. The best you can do is try and learn, right?”
Between the ages of 6 and 12, Rayshawn attended six elementary schools. Twice, he was kicked out for throwing desks at his teachers. A third time, he was booted for fighting. He is asked why he was so angry, and he shrugs. Literally, the braids atop his head do a slight wiggle as Rayshawn Jenkins’ shoulders shrug. “It’s just all I knew,” he says.
Oftentimes, in the corners of James Park, he and his siblings brawled side by side with their mother. “She would hit the other mom,” Rayshawn says. “We’d take out the lady’s kids.” On three different occasions, he and his siblings were removed from Terry’s watch and moved to foster care. On three different occasions, Rayshawn Jenkins was picked up by the police for fleeing.
“We had this fantasy,” Rayshawn recalls. “There was a small fan that you’d plug into the wall. We’d put it on the back of a shopping cart and we imagined the fan would blow the shopping cart and we’d be in it. The fan would somehow blow us away.”
Photo courtesy of Rayshawn JenkinsHe was 8 when he discovered football.
Rayshawn Jenkins had moved across town to live with his dad, who could either be found working as a cook at Eckerd College, volunteering as a local football coach or procreating. By now, Charles had fathered four additional offspring (he has 14 total children by nine women), but he saw something unique in Rayshawn. “His mom kept him isolated in the apartment, so he hadn’t done sports,” he says. “But when you put Rayshawn on a field he would run and run and run. Fast.”
Gary Roland, Charles’ former classmate at Boca Ciega High, was the head coach of the Silver Raiders, a football program for 8- to 10-year-olds in the Pinellas Youth Football League. He remembers the initial sight of little Rayshawn, scraggly and long-limbed, standing atop the grass at Coquina Key Park. Roland had his operation down — at the start of the season, before even touching a football, the kids needed to learn discipline. So he’d have them line up into a straight line, then do it again. And again. “It takes forever,” he says, laughing.
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Once the task was completed, Roland ordered the youngsters to bear crawl from line to fence. And that’s when it hit him. “Rayshawn bear crawled faster than people run,” he says. “I was shocked. Shocked! I’d never seen anything like it.” Roland pulled the boy aside and asked how he learned to move with such velocity. Sixteen years later, the reply sticks with him. “My mom,” he said, “doesn’t allow us to run in the house.”
In his two years with the Silver Raiders, Rayshawn went from sports ignoramus to a bolt of electricity. He could throw the ball like a bullet. He could dash like a small Billy Sims. His hands were cushions, and he hit with pulverizing brutality. Little did Roland know, he was coaching a Who’s Who of future standouts. Along with Rayshawn, the Silver Raider roster included Shaquem and Shaquill Griffin (both now with the Seattle Seahawks), David Jones (a defensive back recently cut by the Patriots), Michael Clark (the recently retired Packers wide receiver), Isaiah Wynn (a Patriots offensive lineman) and Marquez Valdes-Scantling (a Packers wide receiver). “The team was ridiculous,” Roland says. “We were stacked.”
Jenkins didn’t merely enjoy football. He craved it, dreamed of it, lived for it. Once, in the days leading up to a game, Rayshawn got in trouble at school, and Charles gave him a choice — miss kickoff or take a butt whupping. Without so much as a pause, Rayshawn took the butt whupping. “I had to play,” he says.
When Rayshawn aged out of the Silver Raiders, he transitioned to the Lakewood Junior Spartans, another youth team also coached by Roland. The field was a place where the forbidden violence of the real world could be substituted with the approved violence of a game. No one was jumping you on a football field or whipping you with an extension cord. There were no knives or switches. On the football field, Rayshawn wasn’t fighting for a bed (as he had done at his father’s house) or apprehensively turning the corner of a street, half expecting to be punched in the face. It was a place of positive reinforcement where people (gasp!) actually cheered you. “Many of these kids just heard how bad they were — over and over,” says Roland. “That’s toxic. They needed to know they were succeeding.” Roland regularly picked Rayshawn up for practice, then drove him home afterward. On multiple occasions, Rayshawn reached his father’s house, opened the car door and began to cry. “I love my dad,” he says. “But it was just … everything. Football was my escape from life.”
In a perfect world, Jenkins’ embrace of football would coincide with a dropoff in day-to-day violence. He did not, however, reside in a perfect world. He lived with his father for a year, then returned to James Park apartment J1 to be with his mother from ages 9 through 14. He continued to find himself fighting at the bus stop, fighting in the hallways of Riviera Middle School. Looking back, he says his biggest problem was an unwillingness to let things roll off his shoulders. Jenkins hated being reprimanded or embarrassed. He viewed both as affronts to his still-in-development manhood and routinely snapped without pause. His mother had never been one to turn the other cheek and, Elise says, “Rayshawn is a lot of our mom. That intensity.”
Perhaps that’s why he roamed the neighborhood, busting in doors. (“I still don’t understand why,” he says. “Why would you break someone’s door? I was just bad. It’s embarrassing.”). And perhaps that explains the cherry bombs (“One time a cop caught me about to throw one,” he recalls. “He came up from behind and said, ‘Stop or I’ll taze you.’ The officer put me in the back of his car, talked to me and let me go.”). Jenkins was lashing out at a society he didn’t understand; football was the lone refuge from an ever-mounting wave of hopelessness. Though his family is one of the largest in St. Petersburg (a local newspaper once did a feature on the sheer volume of Jenkinses walking the earth), no one had ever attended college. Most failed to graduate from high school. Everywhere he looked, Rayshawn saw people either turning toward crime or standing behind the counter at a local McDonald’s, listlessly flipping burgers and filling cups with Coca-Cola. “You have to understand, we never thought there was anything after high school,” says Elise. “Because in the hood there’s nowhere to go and nobody going there.”
Then, the military called.
Photo by Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesNot the military, per se.
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Military school.
In 2006, Admiral Farragut Academy, a self-professed “military style school” in St. Petersburg, hired Roland to serve as an assistant to Chris Miller, the head football coach whose teams had failed to win a game in two years. Roland says he accepted the position on the condition that he could bring some of his players with him. They would need financial assistance, of course, and Farragut was willing.
Roland will never forget the sheer fish-out-of-water preposterousness of Jenkins’ initial visit to the sprawling campus. The school maintains an enrolled population of approximately 450 students, nearly all white. Uniforms are required. Orders are given. When Rayshawn arrived, he sported multiple tattoos and braids that hung to his mid-chest. He didn’t want to be there; sure as hell didn’t want to cut his hair (as the school would require).
And yet …
“It was a real opportunity,” he says. “Even I could see that.”
Hair reduced to a buzz cut, Rayshawn moved back in with his dad at the start of ninth grade (although Charles has fathered 14 children, the majority lived with their mothers), and the 25-minute drive to Farragut was akin to ditching a Motel 6 for the Ritz-Carlton. Jenkins had never seen anything like Farragut. Kids pulling up in Porsches and Maseratis, talking about their summer trips to London and Paris, about their internships. “I hadn’t even left the state,” he says. “I barely knew you could leave the state.” At Farragut, nobody was waiting to beat you up. Bushes and trees were manicured. Pathways were sparkling clean. On one of his first days, however, a classmate referred to him as a “n—–,” and — Rayshawn being Rayshawn — he proceeded to punch the offender in the nose and knock him out. What ensued was a lengthy meeting with Jenkins, Roland and a school administrator, who said that while he empathized with Rayshawn’s plight, he couldn’t expel every student who uttered the n-word.
“Why is that?” Roland asked, his emotions boiling over with rage.
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“Because,” he was told, “the African-American students use it more than anyone.”
Hmm.
“I had been ready to go to war,” Roland recalls. “But I thought he made a great point, and the word was abolished from the school for everyone.”
For the first time, Rayshawn found himself surrounded by serious people doing serious work. While he was an eighth-grader at Riviera Middle School, a student threw another student in front of a moving bus — and it was barely news. At Farragut, teachers were supportive and engaged. Classmates had big plans — college, grad school, careers. During his sophomore year, he went on a weeklong class ski trip to Squaw Valley in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. It was his first time on an airplane, as well as his first time on skis. Both were loves at first sight. “I’ve skied four times since,” he says. “That’s how much I liked it.”
Always known to be smart and inquisitive, Rayshawn was an A and B student. He embraced the structure and discipline. It felt special. Righteous. Before long he wasn’t merely the best athlete on campus, but one of the more popular students. It’s amazing what can happen when a young man isn’t always on guard. “One thing I can tell you is no one ever questioned his intelligence,” says Roland. “That’s a legitimately intelligent person.”
A member of the Blue Jackets’ track and football teams, Jenkins emerged as one of the region’s elite athletes. As a senior in 2011, he won state titles in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, then was named the Tampa Bay Times’ Offensive Player of the Year. Despite missing six games with a fractured rib, he ran for 994 yards, including 714 in four playoff games. In an opening-round contest against Fort Myers Evangelical Christian, Jenkins rushed for a school-record 356 yards. He played every imaginable position — quarterback, halfback, wide receiver, defensive back — and the team reached the Class 2A state championship game.
Yet despite the success, and despite the myriad scholarship offers, he still needed … something. The pull of the streets is strong and, often, unforgiving. Jenkins wanted to succeed. But coming from a world where that wasn’t defined in the clichéd terms (white-collar job, grassy yard surrounding a house, nice automobile), what did it all mean?
Then, an answer. In the late months of 2011, Jenkins received a text message from his cousin, Carl Lee Martin. Just 15 at the time, Carl was a regular participant in a basketball-and-faith outreach program at the nearby Campbell Park Recreation Center. Yet, like many in the area, he couldn’t fully avoid trouble, and he had recently been charged with robbery. While the case was dropped, Martin appeared shaken. He had watched his cousin’s athletic successes with tremendous pride and told Rayshawn — via DM — that his glory inspired him to aim higher.
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“I still have the message in my inbox,” Jenkins says. “He said he wanted to be like me. That he wanted to go to college, get out of the hood and do better. I know he meant it.”
On the night of Dec. 22, Martin and five friends stole a minivan and drove it toward St. Pete Beach. En route, Demontray Lovett, 18, accidentally fired a .40-caliber handgun from the back seat and hit Martin in the torso. Police were called, and when they arrived in an alley behind 626 23rd Ave., Martin’s body lay lifeless, slumped over a back seat inside the vehicle.
Upon receiving the news of his cousin’s passing, Jenkins broke down. Sure, young death was something you heard about in the hood. But it had never directly impacted Rayshawn. Certainly had never touched his family.
“It’s different when it happens to someone you’re close with,” he says. “It opens your eyes. It awakens you.”
You need to meet the girlfriend.
Everyone insists on this. Meet the girlfriend, and you’ll understand who the man has become. Meet the girlfriend and you’ll understand the sense of tranquility.
So I met the girlfriend.
And they’re right.
Emily Lillard, at first glance, seems to be everything Rayshawn Jenkins is not. Beyond the physically obvious (she’s white and blonde) are the geographically and socially obvious. Namely, Lillard hails from Overland Park, Kansas (motto: “Above and Beyond, by Design”), and was raised by parents who expected their daughter to attend college, just as they had. “If you don’t graduate, it’s weird to them,” says Rayshawn. “It’s what you do.”
The two arrived at the University of Miami in 2012 — Rayshawn as a highly touted incoming freshman football player, Emily as a sophomore transfer from the University of Arkansas, where she starred as a goaltender on the women’s soccer team. At first, it was a friendship. Then a close friendship. Then romance. Jenkins and Lillard bonded as athletes (Emily was one of America’s top netminders in her three years as a Hurricane), as well as athletes with quick triggers. During his first two semesters at Miami, Rayshawn was assigned an anger management therapist by the coaching staff. They would meet three times per week for hour-long sessions — “Just to talk and work things out,” he says. “I hated it.” Like Rayshawn, Emily fought to control her temper. “I used to be a very angry person,” she says. “We needed to calm down.”
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They helped each other by, in large part, being there for each other. People tended to judge Rayshawn by his looks (the braids, the tattoos) and past reputation. They saw him on the field — punishing tackler, endless trash talk — and presumed the worst. Emily, though, believed that beyond the scowl and hardened exterior was a gentle soul itching to express himself. That impression was reinforced during never-ending dialogues. For the first time, Jenkins was trusting another person with his feelings. He could talk to Emily and not feel judged. He wasn’t embarrassed in front of her. He didn’t worry about being ridiculed. “Rayshawn wants to be a good person in every situation,” she says. “He’s actually very quiet and caring. You just had to look for it.”
As had been the case at Farragut, Jenkins had to adjust to Miami. And vice versa. The Hurricanes were coached by Al Golden, and at times the staff judged their young safety to be lazy and irrational. “He was always a good kid, a smart kid,” says Paul Williams, the former Miami defensive backs coach who now holds the same position at Houston. “But you have to remember, kids from the hood aren’t used to the environment. They’re thrown into something so new and so different. To expect them to just adjust is crazy. They need time. Rayshawn needed time.”
Jenkins started 12 games at safety as a sophomore, redshirted the next year with a back injury, then morphed as a junior and senior into one of America’s elite defensive backs. He wore uniform No. 26 in honor of Sean Taylor, the former Hurricanes safety who had been shot and killed in 2007, and in many ways, he played like him. Yes, Jenkins was a pulverizing hitter. But he was also the quickest study in the room. When a coach explained something once, it never had to be said again.
If one moment exemplifies the man he became, it took place in the leadup to his final year with the Hurricanes. Golden had been fired and replaced by Mark Richt, and many within the program wondered how the perceived-to-be-volatile safety would respond to new voices, new directives.
During a defensive team meeting, Ephraim Banda, the first-year safeties coach, called Jenkins out in front of the entire room. He tore into Jenkins’ technique, his body language, his approach. “You need to do better!” Banda said. “I don’t like what I’m seeing!”
Afterward, the safety tapped the coach on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” Jenkins said, smiling. “I needed to hear that.”
Photo courtesy of Rayshawn JenkinsRayshawn Jenkins is eating shrimp.
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We are sitting by a pool at the Marriott in Irvine — the Chargers’ training camp hotel. It’s a gorgeous evening. Soft breeze. Palm trees billowing in the wind. Every afternoon a maid comes to clean his room. The pillow is white and soft. The television is a flat screen.
Again — Rayshawn Jenkins is eating shrimp.
He thinks about this all the time; about the journey and the improbability. “Every morning I pray,” he says. “For everything that’s happened.”
When the Chargers used a fourth-round pick on him in the 2017 draft, many friends and family members were overcome by emotion. His dad, who never cries, cried. His siblings, who have too few reasons to beam, beamed. The outpouring of love wasn’t specifically about NFL paychecks or televised glory. No, it was about a kid from the projects of St. Petersburg defying every possible odd to make it. It was about changing the path for his 12 younger siblings, who had tangible proof that hard work and doggedness could equal success.
“He was the first to go to college, and you better believe that inspired me to go to college, too,” says Charlisa, one of seven siblings who followed Rayshawn to Farragut. “I don’t know how many people can fully understand what we’ve gone through. It was ugly. But he’s rearranged the future for us.”
When practices end, Jenkins heads down Southern California to a home he shares with Emily, their 2-year-old son, Ace, and a pit bull, Nike. Rayshawn, Emily says, is the most playful father you will ever see — loving and engaged and uniquely positive. “If someone is the discipliner,” she laughs, “it’s me.”
On the one hand, Rayshawn never forgets the lessons of his childhood. The sound of an extension cord tearing into moist flesh is not an echo that fades easily. And yet, he is not haunted by the past. He talks with both of his parents semi-regularly. He holds no grudges. Doesn’t even see a reason to hold a grudge.
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Rayshawn Jenkins is eating shrimp and playing professional football.
He is anything but angry.
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