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Branden Fuller wants you to know up front that he hasn’t had it so hard.

With all these people in his corner? How could it have been?

Can he even list them all? His old boss at Kentucky Fried Chicken, who juggled the work schedule around Fuller’s runs and meets. His current boss at the shoe store, who does the same thing – and then every summer cuts back his hours and makes him find another, better-paying gig. The high school track coach who rescued a 120-pound defensive back out of football before he got himself broken in half – well, almost before. The older brother who rescued him from just giving up, and the younger brothers who needed his example. The college coach who believed in him. The high school runners in Spokane who motivated him, even when they had no idea who he was. The teammate who taught him how to study. The gangbangers on the corner back home who heckled him and then told him to keep on running, as far as it would take him. Even the inmates at the county jail where he used to mop 300 yards of tile every night, not that they were exactly cheerleaders.

See, every day’s a lesson, every step’s a choice. What do you want to be? What don’t you want to be?

There are two people conspicuously missing off that list – Mom and Dad. Propriety, convention, rightfulness – all of that suggests they not be mentioned, because they haven’t put a roof over their son’s head since he was 14, but he won’t be a party to that. So put them on there with the rest. They gave him something, too – not by design and not without some heartache, but Branden Fuller wouldn’t be who he is without them, either.

For the purposes of the sports page, Branden Fuller is the most accomplished distance runner at Eastern Washington University in three decades, a resume he’ll try to add to this weekend when he runs the steeplechase at the NCAA West Regionals in Eugene. A finish in the top five – a tough target, as he’s ranked just 14th by entry time – and he moves on to the nationals in two weeks; short of that, he’ll just move on.

He’ll find the right direction. He’s good at that.

“Branden,” said Curt Kinghorn, who operates Runners Soul downtown and has had Fuller behind the counter for the past five years, “is someone I’ll never worry about.”

Worry’s a choice, too. Fuller has never bothered to subscribe.

Without a home at 15, he carved out a life and put himself through high school. Born to the meanest of streets, he doggedly ran through both the temptations and the degradations. Academically unqualified by NCAA standards to compete as a freshman at Eastern, he didn’t just graduate in four years to regain his lost year of eligibility – he finished in 31/4.

He’s not Superman – he doesn’t win every race. But he runs as if he plans to.

Fuller began running at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, though he fancied himself a football and basketball player, too. It took one hellacious hit by a pulling guard in a game against Bellarmine Prep as a sophomore – it broke his arm – to dissuade him from the former notion; a 4:34 mile the next spring with virtually no distance training turned him to track full time.

But about the time he found this calling, he found himself disconnected at home.

“My parents were divorced when I was 6,” he said. “There were six boys and a girl and my mom was really struggling. There was no father figure in the house. My stepdad made some choices that put us in a bad financial situation, where he was incarcerated. And my mom didn’t want us to play sports because she couldn’t afford to buy the shoes or pay for babysitters to take care of the younger kids.

“We just all had different plans. My mom couldn’t take care of me and my dad was off doing his thing.”

Left to his own devices, Fuller – with the help of his oldest brother, Freezal, and Lincoln coach Duane Lee – applied for legal emancipation. By age 15, he was living in his own apartment, working 40 hours a week slinging chicken for the Colonel, paying bills, doing homework and making himself into one of the state’s best distance runners.

Overwhelming? Only every day.

“I struggled and there were times I contemplated just quitting school,” he said. “But I knew my brother wasn’t having any of that and a lot of kids had it worse. In my neighborhood, kids don’t have worries about doing homework assignments. It’s, ‘What am I going to eat tonight?’ and ‘Where am I going to sleep?’ “

At least the running always seemed to be good, and to put a bow on his high school career he beat the best of Spokane – a terrific field that included Shadle Park’s Michael Kiter and University’s Max Schmidt – in the state 3,200 meters on his home track. The reward was recruitment to EWU – but no scholarship, at least not right away. In fulfilling the basic requirements to the state to get a high school diploma, Fuller had been steered away from several NCAA-mandated “core” classes.

But the year of ineligibility, as it often does, allowed for a more graceful transition to college competition and life. Kinghorn hired him on at the store; another Eastern runner who worked there, Chris Henderson, guided him through some academic ABCs. And as everyone – teachers, coaches, customers – got a glimpse of his engaging character, it made it easy to see why all that help Fuller credits is so easily forthcoming.

“Sometimes it’s unbelievable,” said EWU distance coach Dan Hilton. “That first year he had to take a bunch of classes that didn’t even count for credit. We introduced him to a guy who was going to be an advisor. He would have to report to this guy with his classes and grades.

“Well, a few months later, he’s living with the guy. Everybody who comes in contact with Branden likes him.”

Which, perhaps, has made him the most hirable man in Spokane. Besides the store work, he’s had jobs in a wood shop and warehouses. And, of course, there was that summer spent cleaning the county jail.

“Worst job ever,” he said. “I’m cleaning the nurse’s station one day when one of the woman inmates comes through and grabs my arm and says, ‘I get out in three months – this is my inmate number. You look me up.’ I told the boss, ‘I’m never cleaning the nurse’s station again.”

Even the hard times are good. Though he says “there were times I couldn’t even look at my parents,” he has repaired his relationships with both. He packed up his younger brother, Andrew, and brought him across the state to attend Spokane Falls Community College and has seen him blossom as a distance runner. And he became the first Eagle man to reach the NCAA nationals in cross country since the school joined Division I – outrunning the best from the state’s other two D-I schools in the process.

“I don’t ever want to get tired of running,” he said. “That’s the difference between me and a lot of guys. You can count the guys from the state from 2000 and 2001 who had faster times and more talent than I did and who don’t run anymore. They got tired of it.

“I feel like I just got started.”