This kid can do things: The Caleb Prewitt Story

JACKSONVILLE – David Prewitt was worried.

His wife, Karen, wasn’t.

“He can do it,” she said.

Their son Caleb, 13 at the time, was participating in his first open-water swim, something he needed to conquer if he was going to complete his first triathlon.

One thing you need to know about Caleb: He has Down syndrome.

Another thing you need to know about Caleb: It has never held him back.

“When we came home (from the hospital) with Caleb, we said he’s not going to be your typical young man with Down syndrome. We’re going to push him, and so we've always tried to raise him as a typical child,” Karen said.

That meant chores around the house, being active in sports, attending school, and making friends inside and outside of the Down syndrome community.

“We kind of upped the ante when we got into sports,” Karen said.

She coaxed Caleb into running a 5K on Thanksgiving of 2020 by using the Couch to 5K app that gradually built up his endurance. Now, Caleb was training for a triathlon – a 300-meter open-water swim, a 12-mile bike ride, and a 5K race.

He had learned to ride a bike. He had swum in a pool plenty of times. But what concerned David was that Caleb, with assistance from a volunteer partner, was now swimming in a lake to see if he had the strength and stamina to finish that leg of the race.

Turns out, he did.

“He comes out of that water, and he's just laughing,” David said. “And I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got to change your attitude,’ because this kid can do things.”

***

Caleb is now 18. He has completed 119 races in the past five years. Included are 44 triathlons of various distances, five half-marathons, and two Spartan Races.

The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Caleb, 16 at the time, as the youngest person with II2 (Intellectual Impairment, including those with Down syndrome) to run a half marathon (13.1 miles). Caleb’s goal is to add his name to that book again in October by becoming the youngest person with II2 to run a marathon (26.2 miles) when he and his mom run the Chicago Marathon.

Stephen Wright was Caleb’s partner during the early part of Caleb’s running career. He’s amazed at all Caleb has accomplished.

“I don't think people realize, most 14- 15-, 16-year-old kids aren't doing that,” he said. “So not only does he have things he's trying to overcome and prove he can do things, but most kids his age aren't doing the things he's doing. It’s incredible, because I wasn't doing that stuff at his age.”

***

Deb Rains is the assistant head of school at the North Florida School of Special Education (NFSSE) in Jacksonville, where Caleb attends on a Unique Abilities Scholarship managed by Step Up For Students.

Rains called Caleb the school’s “Mr. Mayor.”

“He’s so outgoing,” she said. “He’s friends with everybody.”

Rains said Caleb’s always-in-a-good-mood personality and can-do spirit come from the support he receives from Karen and David. More than a decade later, she vividly recalls her first meeting with them when they visited NFSSE to see about enrolling Caleb.

“I will never forget this. They came in and they had his mission statement,” Rains said.

It read:

• Caleb will have friends.
• He will be a productive member of society.
• He will have a relationship with his savior.

“We built everything around that,” Karen said.

It is important to the Prewitts that Caleb has friends outside of school because, as is often the case when students graduate, friends from school scatter to live their own lives.

Caleb has friends from school. Luke, a classmate, is his best buddy. But Caleb has friends outside of school, too. He belongs to four running clubs. He has friends from Planet Fitness, where he works out, and friends from Happy Brew, a Jacksonville coffee house that sells Caleb’s homemade cookies. (More on that shortly.)

They want Caleb to have a job and be self-sufficient. He graduated in May from NFSSE and will enter the school’s transition program, where he will learn employment skills.

“We're very thankful for that,” David said. “He's got a lot of things that he can look forward to, because he's pretty well known in the community.”

Caleb is eager to hit the job market. He’d like to work at Happy Brew, Planet Fitness, or Publix. David, now retired, worked as a store manager for Publix. Caleb’s sister, Courtney Tyler, works in a Publix bakery.

He’s getting a jump this summer on a possible job at Happy Brew by attending NFSSE’s barista camp.

“As an organization, you have a mission statement and a vision statement, but to take that and place that intentionality on their son's life just showed me that they were not limiting him because of his disability,” Rains said.

“I was very impressed by that. There was a statement to not just me, the school, but to the community, that they expected nothing less from their son than they would their daughter, who's neurotypical.

“That just created the path for him. Since they didn't put any boundaries or limitations on Caleb, there was none for him to be impacted by.”

***

The mood surrounding a child born with Down syndrome isn’t positive, David said. Parents are informed of all the things their child won’t be able to do – ride a bike, run, swim, get a job.

“We were on a mission to prove them all wrong,” Karen said.

Along the way, Caleb has become a role model for the Down syndrome community. He has advocated at the state capital in Tallahassee for the expansion of what is now the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities, which he receives. Karen has written newspaper op-ed columns and spoken to legislative committees in Tallahassee in support of the scholarship.

“If we didn’t have the scholarship, we would have had a tougher journey,” she said.

Caleb has more than 26,000 followers on Facebook and more than 44,000 followers on Instagram. Karen said parents comment on the posts, saying they have more confidence in their child’s abilities after seeing what Caleb has achieved.

Caleb has appeared on NBC’s “Today” show during a segment featuring children with unique abilities who cook or bake. Caleb bakes. Currently, he’s baking the cookies sold at Happy Brew.

It started during the COVID-19 pandemic when Caleb began helping his dad in the kitchen. That led to their cooking show, “Fridays at Four,” that were posted to Facebook. They were hugely popular.

Now, Caleb bakes 20 dozen chocolate chip and sugar cookies a month and delivers them to Happy Brew. The sugar cookies are a hit.

“We can’t keep them on the shelf,” owner Amy Franks said.

Caleb’s “Mr. Mayor” personality is in full force when he visits the coffee shop, Franks said.

“He'll walk in, he'll immediately step behind the counter and start making a smoothie, or he'll hop on the point of sale, like he owns the place, and we just let him do his thing, like go for it,” Franks said. “His work ethic is incredible. He never stops.”

Caleb often wears a T-shirt bearing the slogan, “No Limits.” He wrote that on top of his mortarboard at graduation.

Running, cooking, working out at the gym, Caleb has yet to encounter a limit.

And he does it all with a smile.

“The joy inside of him is so meaningful for us,” Franks said.

***

In 2021, Stephen Wright volunteered to be a partner for a special needs athlete and was paired with Caleb for a triathlon in Sebring.

He remembers how excited Caleb was before the race, and how concerned he was about how Caleb would react to the competition, the crowd, the long swim, which is the first leg.

“There was one point (during the swim) where I turned around and he wasn't there, and I started panicking,” Wright said. “He was actually underwater, trying to tickle my feet. And I was like, ‘All right, man, I can see how the rest of this day is going to go.’ We got out of the water, and everyone cheered for him.”

The two were dead last when they transitioned from the bike ride to the run. At one point, Wright couldn’t see any other runners. He wondered if the race was over.

What he didn’t know was that at the finish line, the race director was rounding up the younger runners who were waiting for the awards presentation and told them to go to the finish line and cheer on this young man who was running his first triathlon.

“We turned the corner, and it was like something out of a movie,” Wright said. “They had two police squad cars waiting, and they flipped their lights on and the sirens, and we ran down the street. It was lined with people. There had to be 100 people at the finish line, and it was one of the coolest things to be a part of.”

David and Karen were among those waiting for Caleb.

“That finish line,” Karen said, “was one of the best experiences of my life.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].