Tennis champion and hometown hero Andre Agassi will see his ultimate dream come true at Saturday night’s 16th Grand Slam charity event with a superstar celebrity lineup. He is firmly convinced that the gala fundraiser will take him over the money mark so that he never has to worry again about his Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy living on forever.
The sports superstar who has raised multimillions told me: “I never thought 15 years ago when we started this, we would make it this far. But I played each year by year with one goal in mind, which was to make sure I can fund the school forever.
“Every year, we’ve taken that a step closer, and now I’m proud to say this Saturday night, it’s not going to be just a fantastic evening because the cast of talent we have, it’s going to be even more of a celebration because I am under the full hopes that we will actually get us over the threshold so we’ll never have to worry about our school living in perpetuity. It’s really exciting -- it’s going to be a very celebratory atmosphere, to say the least.
I had to ask Andre what was the one defining moment, a magic moment, that he decided he had to take on the epic challenge to change education here in Las Vegas with his own charter school.
“This was an evolution in process for me, giving back, and seeing the inequalities that exist in the world, traveling the world. I knew giving back was something that I wanted to do, focusing on children was an easy focus for me,” he said in our one-on-one. “I think the moment that I really took on the Herculean task of building a K-12 charter school in the most economic challenged area of Las Vegas was when I was at my lowest point, quite ironically. I was stuck at No. 140 in the world after being No. 1 in the world and very disconnected with my life, in a life I just didn’t recognize anymore. You read all about that depression and anguish in my book.
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