Hope Now founder, once homeless, leads massive back-to-school event for 13 years and counting.

Thank you Kate Santish for telling the story of the man that stole my heart and continues to amaze me every day with his compassion and grace, every single day.

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By Kate Santich Contact Reporter Orlando Sentinel

It’s four days before more than 20,000 people are expected to crowd the Amway Center for Central Florida’s biggest back-to-school event, and Michael Radka — the man running the operation — is rushing between meetings downtown when a sudden thunderstorm hits. Crossing Central, he sees a woman getting drenched and offers her his large umbrella.

“Here,” says Radka, nodding toward a building down the street. “I’ll be in there for the next hour or so. Maybe just drop it off later.” Then he ducks under an awning and is gone.

He has no idea how long the storm will last, and he’s wearing a pricey suit, but he seems genuinely unconcerned with the outcome of this leap of faith — which is pretty much the way he lives his life.

Radka, whose all-volunteer nonprofit organization will hold its 13th annual Hope Now Back 2 School Bash on Sunday, has been rich, broke, elegantly housed and homeless. He has lived with every comfort and scavenged quarters to buy a bag of chips. And at 51, he says he has learned that the best things in life are those you give away.

“He’ll call me up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got some gift cards. Do you want to meet me downtown and we can pass them out and pray with the homeless?’” says his wife of 23 years, Karla, who works for Goodwill Industries of Central Florida. “That’s his idea of fun.”

This year’s Back 2 School Bash may be his most fun day yet. There, kids can get custom-made backpacks, dental care, haircuts, vision screenings and entertainment. There’s no registration process — those in need just show up until supplies run out.

Last year, 23,000 came, including parents and teachers and 9,000 kids. This year, given the ravages of hurricanes Irma and Maria, there could be more.

“Of course, I’m always afraid nobody is going to show up,” Radka says.

It’s not because he won’t get paid — he doesn’t make a dime from any of this anyway. In fact, he spends a lot of unpaid time lining up sponsors and donors, including, this year, Sam’s Club, Florida Hospital, Reed Nissan, Paul Mitchell and others. He’s also continually cooking up new activities. One year, he had a special lounge where teachers could get free classroom supplies and pampering with chair massages. This year, he’ll have the Celebrity Red Couch Reading Lounge, where local personalities and costumed characters will take turns reading to kids from a collection of free books.

“We just want to plant that seed of making reading cool,” Radka says.

Wendy Oliver, director of grants at Dr. Phillips Charities and a former school teacher, says the orchestration of Hope Now’s annual event is like no other she has witnessed.

“He has thought of everything,” Oliver says. “As a volunteer, you’re told where to park, where to go, what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it. Your job is to help every kid that comes through have the best experience possible. There’s this very dignified way he treats people.”

Your job is to help every kid that comes through have the best experience possible. There’s this very dignified way he treats people.

— Wendy Oliver, volunteer

It is, Radka says, merely paying forward the kindness he was shown himself.

Though he was born into wealth — his family lived off the famous golf course in Pebble Beach, Calif. — his parents split when he was in grade school. His mother took him and two younger brothers to Michigan, where he was poor and often hungry. For an entire school year, all he had to wear was one pair of ill-fitting pants, one pair of battered shoes and two shirts.

Then a teacher asked him to stay after class and gave him a box filled with new clothes.

“I remember walking home being so happy,” he says.

He would later live with his father again — in a mansion in Spain — but when he started getting in trouble as a teenager, he was sent back to the U.S. At 17, he ended up homeless, sleeping in the woods of Seminole County and scouring coin laundries for dropped change so he could eat.

After six months — spent hungry, sick, hopeless — he encountered a couple in an apartment complex where he’d sought cover. They invited him to a Bible study.

“I went to church for the first time in my life,” he says. “They taught me that God is the source of love and that he wants us to be sacrificial. He wants us to be loving and giving and not keep a record of wrongs against us. He wants us to have hope. … I took all of the things that I had — which was just what I could stuff in a small bag — and I threw them all out, and I put a Bible in there. And then some of the single guys at the church asked me if I wanted to stay with them, so I had a place to live.”

Soon he had a job, too, and then a better job, and then his own small company. He began climbing the traditional corporate ladder.

But in 1994, one of his brothers — a former Marine — went to a Lakeland hotel room and shot himself in the head. Eight years later, his other brother — addicted and homeless — died on the streets in California.

“At this time in my life, I’m married to Karla — this beautiful woman — I’m an executive for a big HMO, I’m flying all over for business, and I thought I was the man,” he says. “I just lose it. I just feel like I failed. … I realized my brothers didn’t have any hope left in their lives and I hadn’t been able to give them that.”

It became his mission — not to proselytize or preach, but to spread hope to those who have lost it. In 2003, he started an organization to help uninsured children get immunizations, and in 2005 he and Karla began the Back 2 School Bash — not because a backpack or haircut can change a life, he says, but because he believes that kindness can.

The first year, they helped about 70 kids.

In the dozen years since, it has climbed to over 10,000. Radka, his wife and often their three children — two of them now adults — all help out. The kids test the custom-made backpacks to ensure they can withstand abuse.

“They’re a great team,” says Sister Ann Kendrick, who works with the Apopka nonprofit Hope CommUnity Center. “They show up for real people who are struggling, and they do it out of a place of great compassion. … Michael is amazing.”

These days, Radka is a serial entrepreneur whose charitable work takes up a larger and larger slice of his life, just as he wants it. It only seems to energize him.

“Come Sunday, when I see those children, I will recognize them,” he says. “I was that little kid once.”

As he turns to leave for his next meeting, a man stops him, holding an umbrella. “Some lady dropped this off for you,” the man says. “She wanted to be sure to say, ‘Thanks.’”

[email protected] or 407-420-5503. Follow @katesantich on Twitter. For more information on the Back 2 School Bash, see hopenowinternational.org.

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