Heroes Spotlight: Jhordy Reynoso

Jhordy Reynoso may not have grown up at Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, but when he learned about it a few months ago, he saw immediately what it could have done for him.

“I thought it was a really cool resource,” he said. “Something that could have helped my mom and me. I wish I had that.”

Mercy Home provides young people with stability when life feels uncertain, along with therapy, education support, and guidance designed to help them build long-term independence.

For Reynoso, that’s something he didn’t have.

“These kids come from backgrounds like mine,” he said. “I can relate to that.”

Reynoso was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. When he was 10, his father left.

“There were times when my mom and I would sleep in the car because we didn’t have anywhere to stay,” he said. “I was young, but I remember wondering why we weren’t at home.”

His mother, an immigrant, worked as a waitress in Little Village while navigating financial and legal uncertainty.

“She was always living with that fear,” Reynoso said. “We were on our own.”

There were stretches of moving between small apartments and periods of staying with family. His mother tried to shield him from the reality of it all, distracting him by taking him out to eat and making sure he still got to school.

“I’m an only child,” he said. “It was just us two.”

Eventually, they found stability. His mother remarried and, just last year, she became a U.S. citizen and was able to vote.

“It took a long time,” he said. 

Reynoso attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he studied integrative biology. After graduating, he moved to Puerto Rico with his wife and newborn daughter to be closer to his wife’s family. Reynoso wanted to study pharmacy in graduate school, and ultimately, he realized his best options were in Chicago. 

That decision, combined with the absence of his own father throughout his childhood, weighed heavily on him and his family during the application process. 

“I always had it in the back of my head that my dad left,” he said. “I didn’t want to be like that.”

But after discussing with his wife, he enrolled in a four-year pharmacy school at the University of Illinois Chicago, while his wife and seven-year-old daughter both live and attend school in Puerto Rico. That distance has been one of the hardest challenges of his life.

“I don’t think I had ever spent more than a few days away from my daughter before this,” he said. “Now it’s months.”

He worries about how she might interpret his absence.

“She might think of me the way I saw my dad,” he said. “But I know it’s different. I call her every day. I FaceTime her. Every break I get, I go back [to Puerto Rico] to see them.”

Still, it takes an emotional toll on him. He doesn’t want to be like the father he had. Or in a sense, didn’t have. But that experience taught him a lot. 

“In a way, I know exactly what not to do,” he said.

In recent years, Reynoso has found healing through running. He calls it his therapy. 

In high school, he ran track, but only short distances. He always avoided long-distance running.

“I always hated it,” he said.

That changed in his mid-20s, when he started running again to stay healthy. In Puerto Rico, he signed up for a multi-day race where he ran a 5K, 10K, and half marathon in a single weekend.

“At first, I was freaking out,” he said. “But I loved it.”

In 2024, he completed his first Bank of America Chicago Marathon. But this year, when he decided to tackle it for the second time, he wanted to add more meaning to his miles. 

This time, he’s running for Mercy Home, a local organization that helps children who grew up like him. It feels personal to him. Reynoso is running for children he may never meet, but whose experiences resonate so close to him. 

“I know the way I raise my daughter is going to impact her for the rest of her life,” he said. “And it’s the same for every kid. These kids are the future. They’re going to grow up and impact everyone around us.”

For Reynoso, supporting Mercy Home is about making sure that the future has a chance.

“It’s up to us to make sure kids who are struggling have somewhere to grow,” he said.