Former trash collector, Rehan Staton, is preparing to graduate Harvard Law School next month

Former trash collector Rehan Staton is preparing to graduate Harvard Law School next month, and now he’s helping workers in the same position he used to be in. 

He’s raised more than $70,000 for service employees

“When I see them, I see me,” he added of his “aunts and uncles” who don’t often get the recognition he believes they deserve. “I view them as my equal. They are just my peers.”

Set to receive his coveted diploma in May, Staton made it his mission to give back — beyond the $100 Amazon gift cards he handed out to support staffers last year after his exchange with the custodian.

Staton comes from a family of sanitation workers, claiming he grew up, at times, with very little food and unreliable electricity.

“I remember what it’s like working that type of job,” said Staton, who formed a family-like bond with custodians, cafeteria employees and security workers at the Ivy League university.

Assistant operations manager Brent Bates had encouraged Staton in his studies at the University of Maryland.

“I know what it feels like to be in a position where people would rather act like you don’t exist,” Bates, 31, told the Washington Post.

With the help of his own father, Bates donated $50,000 to the Reciprocity Effect and became a co-founder. One of his co-workers connected him to an administrator at Bowie State University, where his application was reconsidered. He was admitted and given a scholarship for food. Staton earned a 4.0 GPA, even as he continued his job as a sanitation worker, and transferred after two years to the University of Maryland, where he would be selected as commencement speaker. “It was poetic that the people at the bottom of the social hierarchy — ex-felons and sanitation workers — saw my potential and gave me a second chance,” he said. “I was always motivated, but the variables changed so that I could be more efficient and effective in school. That made me want to find a career where I can help give other people second chances. Law seemed like an avenue where I could do that.”

But after graduating from college, Staton was sidetracked from that plan when he suffered an as-yet-undiagnosed health setback that saw him lose 30 pounds. For several months he lay on the couch, too weak to do much else, until his cousin Dominic laid it out: “He said, ‘How about we go for a goal, just to keep your mind busy?’ I started to think about law school again, simply to distract myself from how sick I was and the fact that we were in danger of losing our house to foreclosure,” he said. Later, the same cousin would suggest the video that went viral.

In his first (remote) year of law school, Staton got to know his HLS classmates by playing Among Us, a team-oriented, multiplayer game. At the same time, he continued to deal with his own medical issues while also caring for his father, who had suffered severe health complications after surgery. “It was a difficult time,” he said, but the support of his HLS classmates and professors like David Wilkins ’80 helped, whether it was offering to share study guides or, in one instance, even finding a doctor for Staton’s father. Staton also connected with alumni Theodore Wells ’76 and Kannon Shanmugam ’98 during a summer internship at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. “Whatever stereotypes you might have of a big law firm — my experience was the exact opposite,” he said. “They reached out to provide assistance with my father and were also adamant about finding a doctor for my own health issues.”