A Florida orphan’s plea for a family went viral 12 years ago. Where is he now?

ST. PETERSBURG — He didn’t want to watch the movie.

It seemed sort of cringy, embarrassing and awful, to see himself on screen.

He had never liked how he looked. Or sounded. The thought of spending two hours staring at himself seemed like torture.

“I didn’t even really think it was going to happen,” said Davion Only-Going, 27. “It took so long, and so much changed since they started filming.”

But a few days before the documentary premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival, Davion decided he should see it before strangers did.

He watched it on his laptop. Alone.

“My story is something that I’d never want a kid to go through,” he saw his teenage self say in the opening. “I just bounced from house to house. I was in over at least 35 foster homes.”

• • •

The Tampa Bay Times first shared Davion’s story in 2013, when he shuffled to the pulpit at a St. Petersburg church, an awkward teenager in an oversized suit, and begged for someone to adopt him.

“I’ll take anyone,” he told the congregation. “Old or young, dad or mom, Black, white, purple. I don’t care. And I would be really appreciative. The best I could be.”

Davion was born in jail, raised mostly in group homes and committed to psychiatric wards 30 times. After being sent to five high schools in a year, he was desperate to escape the child welfare system. He searched for his birth mom and discovered she had died.

So he set out to find a family before he grew too old to be adopted.

“I know God hasn’t given up on me,” he said at St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church that Sunday. “So I’m not giving up either.”

Newspapers in England, Australia and Japan picked up his story. He was on Fox, MSN, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, the Today show.

Producers of The View flew him to New York — his first time on a plane.

In two months, more than 10,000 people called Eckerd, the Tampa Bay social services agency, asking to adopt him. Inquiries about taking in other teens tripled.

Newscasters credited him with raising awareness about older kids in foster care. His plea, one said, “has elicited an unprecedented worldwide movement that’s spreading so quickly, it’s been called: The Davion Effect.”

That’s what the director decided to title his film.

“Davion is such a great storyteller,” said producer Matthew Straeb. “We want people to see what he went through and, hopefully, be moved to adopt.”

The movie traces the aftermath of Davion’s prayer — as hope spiraled into despair and he had to forge his own future.

• • •

On the night the documentary debuted, Davion offered to drive Connie Going to Sarasota. She had been his caseworker a decade ago, had driven him to that church and tied his borrowed tie.

He towers over her now, at 6-foot-3. After learning to cook for himself, he’s lost 100 pounds.

“You look great,” Connie told him. “I’m so proud of you.”

As they pulled away from her St. Petersburg house, Davion blasted Tupac, so loud they couldn’t talk. Then, grinning, he lowered the volume and switched to Billy Joel. “I know this is more you,” he said.

“Tupac is fine,” Connie laughed. That’s so not like him, she thought. Instead of listening to his own music, this grown-up Davion was being considerate of her.

The film was debuting at New College of Florida. Outside, they met Richard Prince, who has mentored Davion for more than a decade, and film directors Ken Nolan and GB Young. A host ushered them onto the red carpet, where Davion clasped his hands in front of his waist and almost smiled for the photographers.

Then they filed into the theater’s front row.

Just before the room went dark, Davion turned to scan the audience: Almost 100 people were about to see his story.

“This is so weird,” he told Connie. “How is everyone going to react?”

She patted his knee, then pulled a tissue from her purse.

• • •

His life unfolds onscreen in a series of snapshots that had been tucked into his foster care file: toddler Davion, grinning; him at 7, still smiling.

That’s around the time Connie met him, when he was taken from his first foster home and thrust into a series of other houses and institutions. In the film, she describes how Florida’s Department of Children and Families forgot about him and how Eckerd, the agency hired to help him find a family, didn’t even try for those first seven years. “We failed him so tremendously,” Connie says.

In one group home, Davion says in the film, a boy raped him. In another, he was locked alone in a room for days. Counselors made him take dozens of medications to curb his anger. “Every foster child has trauma,” he says. “They’ve been abused sexually, emotionally, mentally. …

“We never even celebrated birthdays.”

Filmmakers had planned to have actors recreate Davion’s childhood, but the pandemic killed that plan. Instead, artists sketched the scenes, which the filmmakers animated.

“Doesn’t really look like me,” Davion whispered to Connie. “Was I really that fat?”

After making his plea, after social workers sifted through thousands of applicants asking to become his parents, Davion flew to Ohio to live with a minister, his wife and three kids.

Connie thought he had found his “forever family.”

But three months later, Davion was back in Florida, back in foster care. He had gotten into a fight with one the other kids in his new home — and the family sent him away.

A month after returning to St. Petersburg, after being moved into another group home, Davion called Connie.

“Will you adopt me?”

She was a single mom raising two teenage daughters. She already had adopted one of Davion’s friends from foster care. But she didn’t hesitate. “You step into the fear and own it,” she says in the film. “I’m his mom, and that’s it.”

Nothing was easy, Connie admits. Davion flipped her couch, pulled her hair, threw rocks at her car, smashed seven cell phones. It took him a year to sit and play card games.

Then, slowly, milestones: Davion learned to drive, taught himself to cook. One day at Walmart, he called Connie “Mom.” She helped him wean off his medications. Together, they found his birth grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousin, only a few miles away.

At the end of the film, those relatives join Connie and her kids to celebrate Davion’s high school graduation.

The credits were still rolling when the audience, applauding, rose to their feet.

• • •

As the lights came on, a host called Davion, Connie, Richard and the filmmakers up to answer questions. They perched on the stage’s edge, Davion swinging his shiny black dress shoes.

“This is a very, very strong film,” said the first man to take the microphone.

“It’s a wonderful film,” a woman sobbed.

“You have resilience that needs to be cherished,” another said. “You need to keep telling your story to the world.”

So, someone asked Davion, what are you doing these days?

“Well, I’m a legit chef, I guess,” he said. “I don’t burn bacon anymore.”

After earning an associate’s degree at Pinellas Technical College, he got a scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York. He rented a studio apartment in Brooklyn and learned to make beef Wellington.

He worked at restaurants and on cruise ships and is trying to launch his own catering company. He wants to teach kids in foster care how to cook.

“I’m not just a statistic,” he told the audience. “I’m actually going to do something with my life.”

Connie watched him, wiping her eyes. Even after adopting Davion, she had been scared he would fall in with the wrong crowd, get arrested, not follow through on his plans.

Now, he is a chef — and a father. Serenity, whom he calls “my baby girl,” is almost three. She has his soulful eyes and oversized ears. On the weekends he has custody, he FaceTimes with Connie so she can coo over her first grandchild.

Seeing Davion love his daughter, watching him strive to become the dad he never had, Connie said, is the highlight of her life.

“We have 120,000 kids like Davion in foster care in the United States who need homes,” she reminded the audience. She started an adoption agency six years ago to help some of them.

When questions ended, a dozen people lined up to hug Connie and Davion.

On the drive back to the only place he has called home, she asked, “What do you think other kids in foster care will get out of this?”

Davion was quiet for a minute, watching the dark road. Then, he said softly, “I hope it’s hope. A lot of kids in there feel lost. I want to tell them: Take care of your own stuff. Reach out. Ask. There are people who will help. Who actually care.”

How to see ‘The Davion Effect’

The Davion Effect documentary was filmed in St. Petersburg and will be shown at the Sunscreen Film Festival at AMC Sundial 12 on Friday at 11 a.m. A Q&A will follow with the director, producer and star.