The Canadian Olympic champion, who moved to Richmond two years ago to train at the speed-skating oval, was looking for the organic food stores and cool shops of downtown. Instead, she stumbled on a neighbourhood beset by drug addiction, poverty and despair.

“I will never forget seeing people suffer so much,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe that I was in Canada and that this situation — this reality — exists in our country with people who were just shells of themselves.

“I felt like I was in a movie set and I just couldn’t believe it was real.”

Hughes went home that day and told her husband, Peter Guzman, that she had to try to make a difference.

“I can’t leave town without feeling that at least I’ve done something to maybe help this,” she told him.

As it happened, Guzman had been kayaking on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island last spring when he met Nick Boulding, a teacher with the Take a Hike program at John Oliver secondary school in Vancouver.

The program takes youth struggling with addictions and, by introducing them to increasingly challenging outdoor adventures, helps them develop new skills and build self-esteem.

Guzman and Hughes became friends with Boulding, and when Hughes checked out the Take a Hike Youth at Risk Foundation’s website recently, it was if she was reading about herself.

“I was one of your students,” she wrote in an e-mail to Boulding. “That could have been me.”

As a teenager growing up in Winnipeg, Hughes “got into a lot of trouble,” she said. “I was one of those students who didn’t care about anything. I was involved in a lot of drinking at a young age and drugs and smoking a pack a day. That was me and this is me now.”

Hughes, who is the only person to ever win multiple medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics (in cycling and speed skating), believes sports saved her life. And while that may not be the answer for everyone, “goals and dreams and sense of self-worth is the answer,” she says.

So when Hughes won bronze in the 5,000 metres Wednesday — her sixth Olympic medal — she and Guzman decided to donate her entire $10,000 winner’s bonus to the Take a Hike Foundation. Her hope, she says, is that the program, and others like it, will keep at least a few teenagers from taking their own wrong turn to the streets of the Vancouver.

“There’s a big problem here,” she said. “There’s a big, big problem. I do not know what the answer is, but if one does a little bit of research, they’ll see that there are many things that are pulling kids in the right direction.”

The troubled teen who went on to do something no other Olympian has ever accomplished urged others to get behind those programs and make a difference in the lives of young people.

“Give them a chance,” she said. “Give them a chance like I was given a chance.”

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Tips on getting a deferment for your College Loan.

If for some reason you are unable to meet your monthly payments, consider a college loan deferment. A deferment is a suspension of payments for special reasons. Usually, those who borrowed their first Stafford Loans after July 1, 1993, are eligible to defer payments if are enrolled in at least half-time at an eligible school, unemployed, in a graduate fellowship program, in a rehabilitation training program for people with disabilities, or suffering economic hardship. A college education is expensive, but with the right student loan you will be attending class without financial worry in no time

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While it may seem obvious to state it, credit reports are predominantly concerned with assessing the risk involved in lending money to you. Lenders are obsessed with one thing, getting repaid, and their entire industry revolves around making this occur. Therefore, they have developed the credit score that will assess your likely hood of repaying them and this is then used to either approve or reject your application for credit. While this is the basic purpose, some more sophisticated lenders desire to get in on an ever larger share of the market and in order to lend to higher risk borrowers, they create different categories of loans which people with lower scores can qualify for. These loans will invariably have higher interest rates and other less favourable conditions and this will be the price you pay for having a lower credit rating.

Since loans are used to finance homes, education, cars, and most other large purchases in life, the inability to get access to credit, or only to be able to get it at less attractive terms and rates, is a substantially reason to care about your credit report and try to keep it in as good a condition as possible.

Credit reports are also used when you apply for renting or leasing accommodation. This is usually because the landlord wants to be fairly certain that you’ll be able to pay your rent as it falls due. So keeping your credit score healthy at this stage will pay off if you need to be approved for renting or leasing residential property.

There is also a trend among employer to start using credit ratings when assessing job applicants. The reasons they are making use of credit reports are of course different for every employer but there is a consensus that a healthy credit report and a good past record of meeting financial commitments is a good sign that the job applicant is someone reliable and worth employing. While it does seem slightly perverse that the very people that will need a job the most are precisely the ones that can be denied it but that’s the direction things are moving in.

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Ryan Currie and Frank Tominey laughed and joked as they recorded the attack after meeting 31-year-old James Lavery as he walked home.

Currie, 19, and Tominey, 21, shouted “watch this troops” before head-butting, punching and kicking Mr Lavery to the ground and shouting “you’ve just been done”.

Police officers recognised the pair after carrying out a search on You Tube days later and they were quickly arrested.

At Glasgow Sheriff Court on Friday, Currie and Tominey, who were both remanded in custody, admitted assaulting Mr Lavery at Mossvale Road, Easterhouse, on August 6 last year.

Prosecutor Michelle Tollan told the court that Mr Lavery was walking home from his sister’s house when he was stopped by the two men at a secluded lane.

Miss Tollan said: “In the video two male voices ask Mr Lavery, who seems to be under the influence of drink or drugs, to smile for the camera.

“A voice is then heard saying ‘Ryan Currie and Frankie here bamming up a jugger’.

“The verbal mocking continues for a while before the two males show themselves to the camera and it is the two accused.

“Ryan Currie then says ‘watch this troops’ and asks ‘ready?’ before punching the complainer and Frank Tominey is then seen headbutting the complainer nine times.

“The complainer doubles over as Tominey kicks him in the head and Currie shouts ’smash the junkie’.

“Currie then passes the camera over to Tominey and says ‘video me now’ before smiling at the camera and punching into the complainer’s head and body.

“Tominey then says ‘here my turn’ and kicks the complainer again before Currie ushers him away.

The court heard that police later found Mr Lavery with cuts to his face arms but he refused to tell them what had happened.

The video was posted on You Tube a few days later under the name “Ryan & Frankie Junkie Whoopin” and officers recognised Currie and Tominey.

When Currie was later arrested at his home, he told police: “Nae bother, I’ll plead to that, ten-year.”

Tominey admitted to being involved after officers showed the video to him.

Sheriff Robert Anthony told the pair that a custodial sentence was “utmost” in his mind due to the gravity of the offence.

He deferred sentence until next month for reports and remanded Currie and Tominey in custody

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