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ONCE A MENACE TO SOCIETY, MEET THE YOUNG MAN THAT WANTS TO USE VEGETATION AND RECREATION TO STOP VIOLENT DESOLATION IN DETROIT
Detroit, MI -- The Saratoga Community, located in zip code 48205 in the city of Detroit, was once a flourishing and beautiful neighborhood. It was full of homes with manicured yards and businesses owned by people you knew.
Children ran the streets from sunrise to sunset; fearless and carefree. "I was one of those children," says Phillip Sample. "This community deteriorated quickly to become one of the most violent and dangerous neighborhoods in the country, due to drugs and deviant youth via gangs and guns. For those reasons this once beautiful, peaceful, family oriented neighborhood was reduced to what it is today - which is one of the most blighted and desolate areas in the city of Detroit."
The passion and drive behind the Saratoga Engagement, comes from the Visionary and Executive Director, Mr. Phillip "UcciKhan" Sample, who was once one of the deviant youth that contributed in the destruction of this community. In 1994, in the endeavor to protect all the squalor and trash he held sacred, Phillip was involved in a shooting at the corner of Saratoga and Celestine, which is in the heart of the Saratoga Community, where a two-year old baby was shot and ultimately died.
