Dolores Aveiro was a cook and cleaner in Madeira, Portugal. When she found out she was pregnant for the fourth time, she made a decision: she could not have that child.
The family lived in misery, her husband José Dinis had been battling alcoholism since returning from the colonial war in Angola, and the three children she already had barely had enough to eat.
She went to the doctor and he refused to perform the abortion. That child was born on February 5, 1985 and was named Cristiano Ronaldo.
He grew up in the parish of Santo António. He and his siblings waited at night outside a McDonald’s until the employees gave them the leftovers from the day.
At age 12, Sporting CP signed him for a fee of just 1,500 dollars.
At 14, he left school to devote himself to football. His father died in 2005, at age 53, without seeing the titles, the records, or the Ballon d’Or awards.
In 2020, Ronaldo became the first athlete in team sports to surpass 1.000 billion dollars in cumulative career earnings.
Today he has more than 669 million followers on Instagram — the highest figure of any person in the world — and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to build schools and fulfill the dreams of sick children. The same child who was unwanted in the world is today the most followed on earth.