For the last six years, Michael Pacheco has been walking – or riding a bicycle when it's not in disrepair – to Pioneer Elementary School in Foothill Farms with the children he is raising as a single father.

When they arrive, Pacheco helps teachers with their work, binding children's homework packets and helping supervise physical education.

He walks home for lunch, then walks back to the school to help in the afternoon, and rounds out the day by walking his four children – Tomas, 10, Juanita, 8, Natalie, 6, and Penelope, 4 – home to their two-bedroom apartment a mile away.

The trips are slow for Pacheco, 39, who walks with a limp.

In 1998, Pacheco was at a party in San Jose where things got out of hand. He was not involved in a fight, but in a case of mistaken identity, was severely beaten.

When he awoke from his coma 19 days later, he was deaf in one ear after being hit in the head with a baseball bat, and he couldn't walk because of injuries to his nervous system.

"Sometimes there's pain," said Pacheco, who spent his youth in "trouble" he said. "My physical disability forced me to change. Sometimes I say I'm glad I got injured because it humbled me. I would have been dead or locked up. Every day I wake up and try to make today better … (be) a better person, a better father. I paid my dues, and I came a long way to where I am now."

Pacheco, who has a fifth child, a grown son, said, "Raising four kids is not easy. Sometimes they think I'm mean, but I just want them to have a better life than I had. I didn't have anyone to guide me."

Pacheco didn't finish high school. Because he worked jobs requiring physical labor, he lost his livelihood after he he was attacked.

"Being physical was all I had," he said. "I was the furthest thing from lazy."

Pacheco lives on Supplemental Security Income, but refuses to live in low-income housing and spends most of his monthly money on rent, and the rest on his children, who take turns sharing the two twin beds in the house.

"He's trying to do a good job raising his children and break this cycle; he had a very difficult upbringing," said Liz Wihtol, a third-grade teacher at Pioneer who has taught Pacheco's children. "It's about redemption. He's done a really good job of changing his life, and he has high expectations. His children value their education, and I think that's in large part because of their father."

Wihtol has asked Book of Dreams readers to help buy:

• Christmas presents for his children.

• A new bed for Tomas.

• A trundle bed for the girls to share, providing one bed per child.

• A hide-a-bed sofa so that Pacheco doesn't have to sleep on the couch.

• A bicycle and customized shoes for Pacheco.

The California Highway Patrol is buying new bikes for the children.

"Going to the school means everything to me," Pacheco said. "I just want to be there with my son and daughters and show them that it's cool to be at school."

Needed: New beds and Christmas presents for Pacheco's children; a sofa bed, customized shoes and a bike for Pacheco. Total: $5,000

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