Love blooms and families find root in the most unexpected places.
So it goes that Reggie and Valerie Hayes and their three youngest children this week visited oldest child Jacori, 30 years after Mom and Dad met so far from home on orientation day of a 3M internship in Maplewood.
She was Mississippi-raised and Memphis State-educated, an electrical engineering student soon to be 21. She spotted an ad in a technical magazine seeking applicants for a summer work program in Minnesota, of all places.
He was from New Jersey, Rutgers-educated, a mechanical engineering student who had served a long, hot summer's internship with 3M in Austin, Texas.
Reggie was already legal drinking age and owned a car, a well-traveled Toyota Corolla. That made him notable among that summer's intern class, which had to get to work themselves from the dorms of what was then called the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul.
"Probably for the first time in my life I was popular," Reggie Hayes said.
A mutual friend introduced them that first day, primarily because Reggie had that car and Valerie needed a ride every morning.
"I don't know if there were sparks immediately or not," Minnesota United midfielder Jacori Hayes says these 30 years later. "I'm fortunate because I'm here now."
There was something there. Reggie and Valerie were older than other interns. So they gravitated toward cheap happy hours together at Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant — a couple of long corner kicks from where their son now plays at Allianz Field — and toward each other.
They made pilgrimages to First Avenue and Glam Slam nightclubs in downtown Minneapolis, seeking chance but never successful sightings of musician Prince in his natural habitat.
"We were the ones who could go out and hang out," Valerie said.
The next summer, they came back to Minnesota and did it all again.
Eventually they fell in love, married, settled in Bowie, Md., just outside Washington D.C., pursued careers in engineering and the law and raised their four children. There were interviews and offers, but neither ever took a job with 3M.
Reggie still works as a mechanical engineer. Valerie is a patent attorney, a job to which she applies her engineering degree.
All these years later, Reggie had been back to Minneapolis twice, both times to move Jacori into an apartment after he was traded from FC Dallas to Minnesota United before last season. The family's trip to visit Jacori this week was Valerie's first time back in Minnesota since 1992.
Their Twin Cities summer tour with Jacori, daughters Carmyn and Camber and 14-year-old soccer player Braxton included drive-bys of their former dorms and the soccer stadium. They visited Minnehaha Falls and George Floyd Square, too.
"Which was very important to be able to put the scene together with everything we've been seeing on TV," Valerie said.
On their first night in town Tuesday, they celebrated Jacori's 26th birthday with dinner and beignets at Fhima's. Then on Thursday, a late lunch in a summer's breeze on the beach in Wayzata. On Friday, the Mall of America, where Reggie and Valerie visited together right after it opened in their final summer in Minnesota.
They'll all head to Allianz Field on Saturday to watch Jacori and his Loons teammates play against San Jose.
With every stop so far, they wondered at the what-ifs.
"I wouldn't be here, right?" Jacori asked. "Or it'd be something else completely different. It's crazy how life works out, little coincidences, fate or whatever you want to call it. It's truly special they haven't been back here together since those summers."
Four years after his parents met, Jacori was born at Andrews Air Base, where the U.S. president flies in and out on Air Force One. The Air Force paid for Valeri's undergraduate education and she in turn owed it 4 ½ years of active duty afterward.
"I've driven past it," Jacori said. "Maybe saying I was born there is enough to get me [security] clearance."
His parents and sisters are staying in a hotel not far from Jacori's apartment. Little brother is sleeping on big brother's air mattress. Jacori brought Braxton to training on Thursday for a taste of a soccer professional's life. Lanky and lean, Braxton plays an age group up on D.C. United's academy team and has trained with his big brother and MLS players.
"I just want to expose him to everything that he can, everything I didn't have growing up," said Jacori, who attended famed DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland and Wake Forest. "Seeing the professional environment, seeing that it's right there in his grasp. Hopefully, it's motivation for him to keep going because I know ultimately that's what he wants to do."
Jacori wants to play on the same pro team with little brother someday.
"He's going to have to sign when he's 18 so I can be 30," Jacori said. "Or I'll have to talk to Ozzie [veteran teammate Ozzie Alonso] about how I can play until I'm 35."
His own career, his brother aspirations, all of it owes to two college graduates who rode to work together on the first day of a summer internship in Minnesota long ago.
"I always thought it was fate that we met," Reggie said. "Everybody asks, you're from New Jersey and she's from Mississippi, so how did you guys meet? Not too many people want to believe the story. We've always wanted to bring the kids back to this area, just so they could see how we met.
"And then for Cori to end up playing here, it's just fate. Nah, it's not coincidence. It's all by the hand of God."
