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Freshman cornerback Wondy Pierre-Louis is One happy Florida Gator

Freshman cornerback Wondy Pierre-Louis has experienced the kind of poverty and hardships that most people can't even imagine, but he has always maintained a positive attitude and his trademark smile

GAINESVILLE ? His bulletproof vest is his smile.

Hardier than Kevlar, his radiance has deflected the shootings he has witnessed.

"It's kind of normal (to see people get shot)," he said. "But I'm not going to be scared of anything."

Wondy Pierre-Louis' nourishment is his smile.

More satisfying than the McDonald's he relied on his first two years of high school, his exuberance always kept him full. Always kept his mind off the fact that he slept on a mattress on the floor. Always gave him confidence that God would prevail. It drove him to ignore the bugs on his apartment floor. It nudged him ahead of the inner voice that countered:

You cannot make it. You will rot in Naples. You will stay in Haiti. You will never get your visa. You will never see Gainesville again.

Pierre-Louis does not know sadness and sadness does not know him. And so, underneath the 4.3 speed and the dreadlocks of the Florida freshman cornerback, lies an oddball. An unorthodox, bubbling personality. Pierre-Louis has always refused to capitulate to the pressures of the world and the violence of his homeland.

He could have been killed in Haiti. He could have adhered to the streets of that Haitian neighborhood in Naples. He could have settled for less. He could have acted like the average human, gone the easy route, the convenient route. But why be boring, dull, apathetic to life? Pierre-Louis has always lived life to a different beat. A Caribbean beat.

Living in shackles

The mother of a middle-class Haitian family, Dessece moved Pierre-Louis and his brother John to Naples in 2002. Life was decent in Haiti, but it could have been better. It was certainly supposed to be better.

The two brothers found a shack in a rundown Haitian neighborhood and started from scratch. They had the bare essentials: a home, paid rent (sent by their mother) and schooling (nearby Lely High).

They also had something else: football.

John, the older brother, helped introduce Pierre-Louis to the sport. Lely cornerback Fritz Jacques ? now with Kent State ? turned off the lights.

"The first time I got hit, I was knocked out for like five minutes," Pierre-Louis said. "They just put me back there and said, 'Run the ball.' I thought everybody was on my team."

But Pierre-Louis had a secret: goats.

The 14-year-old had chased them to pass the time in Port-au-Prince. It was a popular game on the island. The children would restrain the animals before suddenly letting them loose. Whoever was timed pouncing on a goat the soonest became a local hero. Pierre-Louis was good at this little diversion. He was fast ? scary fast. And he had also played soccer. Had a helluva leg, he did.

So Pierre-Louis shook off the blackout, strapped on his honest-to-goodness smile and said, "Bring it."

He was playing football soon: mainly cornerback but also receiver, punter and kicker.

Yup, he could punt and kick ? more on that later.

The English language came easily to the Creole-speaking Haitian. He learned it at practice. He learned it watching "That's So Raven" on the Disney Channel. It was the only show he has ever religiously followed. After six months of the program, Pierre-Louis had essentially mastered his new language.

And he loved his neighborhood. Because while it was inhabited by Haitian families who could only afford low rent and the bare necessities, it also teemed with football teammates.

"We had fun; we was from the hood," Pierre-Louis said.

When they weren't playing backyard football, they were throwing block parties. It was a wholesome good time sparked by Pierre-Louis' joviality.

But just 2½ years into his U.S. stay, the unexpected happened. John moved to New York to look for work. He left his younger brother as the sole proprietor of the 25-by-25-foot shanty.

The teenager's living conditions soon deteriorated.

His door hung off its hinges. His clothes resided in a plastic bag. His refrigerator housed spoiled food. His kitchen was devoid of any pots, pans or cups. He had one plate and one fork. His shower lacked a curtain. There was no TV, table, chairs or couch. And with no sheets and just a blanket, Pierre-Louis slept on a mattress by the bugs that roamed his floor. Yet he still had a radio. He still had his trophies strewn about his floor. And he still possessed an indomitable spirit that could hardly be shaken.

"I thought it was tight because I was the only one living in there," said Pierre-Louis, who compared the total space of the shack to someone's average living room. "I didn't prefer anything better. It was all good."

Buddy Quarles hardly agreed. The Lely cornerbacks coach drove Pierre-Louis home one day. When he arrived, a frog jumped out of the shack and attached itself onto Pierre-Louis' shirt.

"He wouldn't go into his house," Quarles said. "I finally got the frog off him, and then I opened the creaky door and stared at the wide-open fridge door. I asked him, 'What do you have to eat in there?' He said, 'I've got nothing to eat.' "

Mold, dust, dearth of essentials. Quarles himself had grown up in that same decrepit, threadbare neighborhood. But even the homes on Hardee Street were not as tattered as Pierre-Louis' abode.

"Pretty nasty, pretty dirty," Quarles said. "It was pretty sad. It was gross. It should have been torn down.

"The place was falling to pieces. It was very primal. I said, 'You can't live here ? no way. You've got to go.' "

Quarles then approached his wife and divulged the situation.

"You have to trust me on this one," Quarles told her.

The family succeeded in taking Pierre-Louis in. The teenager fit in snugly. The very next day, he was playing basketball with Quarles' three children, all younger than 10 at the time.

Pierre-Louis did everything the Quarleses did. He accompanied them to church. He rode his first roller coaster at Disney World.

Quarles even taught him responsibility. When the assistant coach first asked Pierre-Louis to take out the trash, he vivaciously agreed.

"He always had a smile on his face," Quarles said, compelled to restate the obvious over and over. "He's always happy. Even when he's down, he's smiling."

Haitian chaos, American football

While Pierre-Louis was living a reinvigorated lifestyle, conditions deteriorated in his native country.

A rebellion during February 2004 tore apart Haiti. Rebels were determined to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The civil war ravaged the already impoverished nation. When the rebels approached Port-au-Prince, they sacked and burned the store of Pierre-Louis' mother. Unexplained. Unprovoked. Unbelievable.

"They would go walking around burning everything they find. They dumb," Pierre-Louis recalled in his trademark Caribbean accent. "They didn't only burn our store, but other places, too. They were just doing bad things just because they didn't want the president."

Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre eventually succeeded Aristide, but it was too late. The country had been decimated. U.S. Marines and United Nations troops were called in to restore order.

Two years later, Haiti has failed to recover. The country is the least developed of any in the Western Hemisphere. It ranks 153rd out of 177 countries in the U.N.'s Human Development Index.

Yet in Florida's safe haven, Pierre-Louis continued to blossom. Still largely a novice at the game, the cornerback burst onto the football scene as a junior.

Gifted with incredible speed and a 37-inch vertical leap, Pierre-Louis made his splash playing against Cape Coral.

Lely coach Chris Metzger remembers how Pierre-Louis challenged Cape Coral's two blue-chip receivers. He remembers the cornerback jumping to an incredibly high apex to intercept one ball. When Pierre-Louis landed, he juked his way to the opposite side of the field, avoided some tackles and scampered for a 43-yard touchdown return.

"We said, 'Wow ? this kid is special,' " Metzger said.

Pierre-Louis intercepted two passes as a junior and returned both for touchdowns. He recovered two fumbles and recorded 36 tackles. He also burned up the track; Pierre-Louis won the Class 4A state titles in the long jump and triple jump. He would nail numerous 40-yard field goals during his career and also made for a serviceable receiver.

"I would do everything," Pierre-Louis said. "I would do kickoffs, then I would punt the ball like 55 yards."

Urban Meyer and the Gators soon took notice. Florida swayed Pierre-Louis away from West Virginia. Then Haiti intervened. The country demanded that he return after his graduation. Haiti wouldn't grant him a visa.

Locked up at home

"I didn't want to let my son go," Quarles said. "I told him, 'Don't give up. You've gotten this far. What you've done to get here ? that's not a normal person.' Then I told him, 'If something happens and you get stuck there, I'm coming after you. I promise.' "

In June of this year, Pierre-Louis headed to Haiti shrouded in uncertainty. It was estimated that he had a 10 percent chance of obtaining the visa he so crucially desired. If the government decided to reject his paperwork on a whim, he would never play for the Gators. The situation reminded Pierre-Louis of his time in Haiti as a youngster.

Peril and poverty abounded.

His mother never allowed him to leave the house. Someone would drive him to school, and someone would be waiting to bring him back as soon as school ended. It is only while describing his country's condition that Pierre-Louis speaks louder, faster, excitedly.

"It is that dangerous," he said. "You get outside and you never know what could happen to you. I would just sleep and eat. If you walk down the street, people just start running and shooting. You don't know who's shooting, so it's bad. If you go outside, you better know where you're going."

Pierre-Louis wouldn't even feel safe buying groceries.

"I found people to buy me food ? some girls," he said with a chortle.

A miracle soon materialized itself in the form of Florida secondary coach Chuck Heater. The Gators dispatched Heater to travel to Port-au-Prince and intervene. Then the coach discovered the following: 53 Americans had been kidnapped in Haiti in 2005, and 20 more had been kidnapped in the vicinity of the capital's airport during March.

"You start learning more about what you're dealing with and you're like, 'What an idiot (I am),' " Heater said.

Still, he flew to the country and was stealthily transported to the Pierre-Louis household. He hardly dared venture outdoors.

"I just remember looking out of the second floor of the house one morning and on the right was a lady walking with a bucket on her head and getting water from the well," Heater said. "On the left was a shack with a lady and three kids."

The coach pleaded with the U.S. Embassy and the Haitian government. He left the country a cautious optimist. Then it happened. They granted Pierre-Louis the visa.

"We definitely think God had a plan for Wondy," Metzger said.

The next Deion?

When Meyer removed the black stripe from his freshman's helmet in August, Pierre-Louis was ? you guessed it ? all smiles.

"I busted my ass on kickoffs and special teams," he said that day. "And at cornerback, I was lighting people up. This means I'm going to play."

Reggie Lewis and Ryan Smith have a monopoly on cornerback playing time, but Pierre-Louis has already made an impression on Meyer's special teams. He has served as a starter on the punt and kickoff teams, recording a tackle in each of Florida's last three games. Pierre-Louis has five tackles for the season.

"He looks at me like I have six heads sometimes when I'm explaining stuff to him, but he can run," Meyer said. "He's begging me to play and I love that. We're going to get him involved."

Pierre-Louis is still a raw talent, a blueprint for future success waiting to burst out of a shell.

"He could be in the pros in three years," Quarles said. "In fact, he could be one of the best DBs to ever play football. It's his fault if he isn't."

Quarles says this in complete seriousness. He played against former NFL great cornerback Deion Sanders when the two were on Pee Wee teams in the Naples area. Dare we say it?

"Deion has nothing on Wondy ? I'm telling you right now," Quarles said. "I'm not saying this because I'm close with him, either. That kid is an athlete. I've seen Deion play, and Wondy is one of those special kids."

He's certainly gifted, this jumble of joy and life. He is a different player, a different person.

He does not know what "Family Guy" or "The Simpsons" are. He does not use a computer and does not watch TV unless there is football on. He received his first cell phone just months ago.

What is the saying ? ignorance is bliss? A cliché, but in Pierre-Louis' case, a way of life.

Teammates say he always lifts their sprits when they're down. All you have to do is see him dance.

He always tells Lewis, "You gotta have rhythm."

Retorts Lewis: "If he can't do anything else, at least he can dance."

Pierre-Louis is amazed by little in the U.S. He is mostly boggled by UF's medical staff.

"Here at Florida ? if you get hurt, they take care of you right on the spot," said Pierre-Louis, eyes wide open, portals into a virgin soul that has always marched to the beat of the smile.