Hakeem Nick's Life Story.

This article...... "PART" of this article was written before Nick's Bowl game.

Looks like Hakeem made the most of his opportunity.


Had a difficult life as a young boy.

BTW, Nicks went to the Same H.S. as Mo. Massaquoi



UNC's giving receiver
Football enabled the junior from Charlotte to avoid his older brothers' troubles. Now it could provide a means of support.

Robbi Pickeral - Staff Writer

Published: Sat, Dec. 27, 2008 12:30AMModified Sat, Dec. 27, 2008 01:40
CHARLOTTE -- North Carolina receiver Hakeem Nicks hopes he'll be one step closer to his ultimate dream when he walks into Bank of America Stadium for the Meineke Bowl today. His hopes stretch beyond playing West Virginia (8-4), even though he has waited three years to compete in a bowl game. They extend past impressing pro scouts one more time before he decides whether to leave school early for the NFL.

Ultimately, the dream leads off the field, to his desire to bring his siblings together.

"All five of us -- my two brothers and two sisters -- haven't been together at the same time since we had this little family picture made, I think it was when I was 2," said Nicks, who starred at Charlotte's Independence High. "I want to make that happen."


Even if he makes it to the NFL, it won't be easy. His oldest brother, Jamar Aleef Nicks, 27, has been in and out of federal prison on drug and weapons charges. His other brother, Robert Anwar Nicks III, 26, is in the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in White Deer, Pa., after pleading guilty to possessing a firearm as a convicted felon and attempted carjacking. Older sisters Amiah and Anyea, ages 23 and 22, also live in Pennsylvania, and mostly keep in touch with their little brother via the phone.

But Hakeem Nicks, who recently became the first Tar Heel to amass more than 1,000 receiving yards in a season and has garnered plenty of attention with his improbable-looking one-handed grabs, has already proven that nothing is ever quite out of his reach.

"Hakeem, I think, can make anything happen," said his stepmother, Vernice Simpson. "Look at everything he's done so far."

And how much he's overcome.

Family complications

Nicks insists that his older brothers could have been as good -- if not better -- athletes than him, had circumstances been different.

"They definitely could have played [in college] somewhere," Nicks said. "My dad just didn't put forth the effort like he did for me because he was still young ... and they steered off the wrong way."

Nicks and his two sisters moved in with their maternal grandmother, Dorchina Urrutia, in Pennsylvania when Nicks was 6, while his brothers Jamar and Robert lived with their father, Robert Nicks Jr., in Charlotte. Hakeem Nicks said that if it wasn't for his grandmother taking care of him when his mother couldn't, "I wouldn't be here. She took in me and my sisters when we really needed somebody."

When Nicks was 9, however, he took a trip with his paternal grandmother to visit his father, brothers, stepmother and two step-siblings in Charlotte, and he never returned north.

"At the end of the summer, he said, 'Dad, I want to live with you,' " said Robert Nicks Jr., a former boxer in Philadelphia who has owned a painting and small repairs business in Charlotte for nine years. "... After that, I wanted to get him into sports, and one day I asked him, 'Do you want to put the gloves on or go play football? I signed him up for football right after that."

By then, Nicks' two brothers were already running with the wrong crowd, but they were still two of their little brother's biggest fans. Hakeem particularly remembers Robert III being so excited "that he would run up and down the sideline cheering, wherever the ball was at."

The brothers could not be reached for comment, and it remains unclear how they ended up on the road to trouble while their youngest brother took the path to stardom.

Nicks Jr. said the relationship between the two sides of the family is contentious -- in part because of Hakeem's decision to live with him.