The drive to help others can take hold at any stage in life. Sometimes a specific experience changes a person and inspires them to give back. Others describe a philanthropic spirit that comes from the soul.
For Rafe Cochran, the calling came at the ripe old age of nine. When the now-14-year-old junior golfer isn’t swinging a 7-iron, he’s swinging a hammer, helping to build and raise money for new homes and schools for underprivileged kids in Haiti and Jamaica. He’s been at it for almost six years.
It all began for Rafe in third grade. A local organization called Food for the Poor visited his class at South Florida’s Palm Beach Day Academy to teach children about global citizenship, social responsibility and, specifically, the suffering of people in Haiti and Jamaica. The organization’s motto — Saving Lives, Transforming Communities, Renewing Hope — hit the youngster like a thunderbolt.
“I just stopped for a second,” he says. “I thought, Look at how fortunate we all are in America, and look at what they’re going through in these other countries.”
For Rafe and his classmates, Food for the Poor painted a vivid picture of kids their age living in huts without roofs and in homes that had been destroyed by storms, mudslides and hurricanes. Rafe needed to know more.
“I’d say that he’s a very compassionate person — curious, very driven, extremely competitive,” says Rafe’s dad, Jay Cochran, a former pro race-car driver. “Whether it’s school, surfing or golf, he strives for excellence.”
Rafe’s parents tagged along on their son’s third-grade field trip to the Food for the Poor headquarters in Coconut Creek, Fla., and that’s where the boy’s curiosity soared.
“We’re on this tour of the facility, and all of a sudden we realize Rafe is gone,” Diahann Cochran says of her son. “We eventually found him off on his own, talking with the projects manager, Delane Bailey-Herd. He was telling her his plan, and how he was going to help.”
“I was impressed with his level of intelligence,” says Bailey-Herd. “When he shared that he was going to help us, I had no idea it would be on such a grand scale.”
Rafe’s pitch was simple: Use golf to help those in need. And so a nine-year-old launched a golf tournament that would eventually raise more than $300,000.
Now in its fifth year, the Rafe Cochran Golf Classic is supported by the Palm Beach community. Rafe’s well-networked mom and dad certainly helped get the tournament on its feet, but make no mistake, the kid runs the show. He finds sponsors, organizes the day’s activities and helps distribute the cash that’s raised.
“I don’t know where such compassion comes from, but it’s there,” his father says. “He saw what people were going through, it touched him and he decided that this is what he needs to do to make himself feel whole.”
