2 | Local Hero

For the kids out there who need a voice, who want a better system of care for tomorrow.

Nicholas Rossi became interested in politics at a very early age.

At the age of 14, he was able to secure a position in the State House in Providence, Rhode Island, as a page, which is a bit like a gopher for the politicians.

And that gave him a taste for life and politics.

And then he became a campaigner for improvement in the child welfare system.

His precocious rise to a job in the state house is all the more remarkable when you hear what he has to say about the rest of his life at that time.

My mother was a lovely woman, but she did not understand the importance of very basic things.

This is an extract from a book that Nicholas wrote called Ig Noble Inferno.

It's just a short self-published e-book.

It's about Nicholas's childhood.

We've got an actor to read out extracts from it.

Here he's talking about the moment he won that job at the State House and what happened when he needed to get the uniform of khaki trousers and a blue blazer.

Mom, I said, I need this blazer.

My job depends on it.

I was 14.

I didn't have the money to go to Nordstrom to get the blazer on my own.

His mother, however, was, according to the book, struggling to cope after relationship problems and the loss of a couple of close family members.

Nicholas paints a picture of a sort of double life during this period, mixing it with Rhode Island's great and good at the statehouse, then returning to a home with bare cupboards and an empty fridge.

Fortunately for Nicholas, the politicians he was working for realised something wasn't right.

The lawmakers would invite me to stay after committee hearings, where catered food would wait in the committee ante rooms and the house lounge.

I would be invited to eat as much as I wanted and take some of my briefcases for the morning, where breakfast was a rarity.

This is just Nicholas's side of the story, of course.

His mother might remember things differently, but what's not in dispute is that in his early teens, Nicholas was taken into care.

He describes an adolescence that goes from bad to worse.

He says he was put into what's called the night-to-night program.