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The story of Freddie Figgers is awe-inspiring giving that he was discovered at a dumpsite at two days old, but he is now a young millionaire and tech boss.
Being found in the dustbin earned him the name ‘dumpster baby’ by bullies at school. It seems his real mother abandoned him with his life hanging by a thread until a kind man discovered him with his placenta almost intact in a dumpster in rural Florida, according to a BBC report.
At eight years old, he asked his father, Nathan, about the circumstances of his birth.
His foster dad said: ”Listen I’m going to shoot it to you straight, Fred. Your biological mother, she threw you away, and me and Betty Mae, we didn’t want to send you through foster care and we adopted you, and you’re my son.”
Freddie said he was the centre of jokes in school and many children called him derogatory names that he felt worthless. At one time, he said, some of the kids would grab him and throw him into dumpsters until his father started waiting for him at bus stops after school.
When he turned nine years old, Freddie walked alongside his father into a shop dealing in old electronics. They saw an old Macintosh computer and Freddie said his father bought it for him for N9,960 ($24). The Mac was not working but since he is good with electronics, he took it apart and started looking for where the fault is.
He tried to fix it about 50 times, finally, the computer switched on and Freddie was ecstatic. He said the computer replaced all the taunts and pains he felt at school.
When he was 12 years old, his skills were noticed by his school and they started asking him to fix old broken computers at the school for N4,980 ($12) per hour. He never minded what people said about him. He buried himself in work.
A few years later, a coding opportunity came up in his town, Quincy. They needed a system to check the water pressure gauges and a computer company had quoted about N24.9 million.
The town said they could not afford the amount. Freddie volunteered and got the job done to specification.
He wanted to bring up-to-date communications to rural areas and in 2008 made the first of many applications for an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) licence to start his own telecoms company, BBC said.
In 2011, at the age of 21, Freddie became the youngest telecoms operator in the US.
According to NBC News report, Figgers Communication remains the only black-owned telecommunications company in the country. As at 2017 his tech company was worth $62 million.
Sadly when Freddie was 24, his dad Nathan died in January 2014 at the age of 81.
