James Miles of Troy admits if you saw him on the street or in the alleys of the Collar City you’d turn around and walk the other way.

“Me and my twin brother were terrors to this community for a long time,” he said during a recent interview. “We had to fight for everything for respect. So we scared a lot of people.”

Miles is very open about his past — he doesn’t make excuses for his actions, but says recently he was forced to look in the mirror.

“I put a lot of negative into this community. They have seen the scary me. They’ve seen the scared me,” Miles admits. “I struggle with my past, I struggle with addiction, but I want to show I’m not what I’ve done, I’m what I’ve overcome.

“Someone passed away recently and he was doing what I was doing and that scared me. It shook me to my core.”

Miles says he always speaks in metaphors and his life right now is just that — he says the moment he decided to clean up his life, he also decided to clean up his city.

“I got clean and I said if I go outside and get dirty and come home and take a shower then I’m staying clean,” he says.

Miles has started a program he calls Bridge 2 Bridge in Troy. Over the last two months, he has been back out on the streets, but this time to clean up a city he says means so much.

“It means everything to me. I’m born here. I have it tatted on me,” he says, raising his right arm that has “Troy” emblazoned. “Almost all my tattoos that scare people are tattoos of this neighborhood — 6^th Ave. I am Uncle Sam’s nephew.”

“I am very surprised with the turnaround he has made,” says neighbor Debbie Plante. “I’ve seen him in his good, I’ve seen him in his bad and I see him today. Today is never the person I would imagine seeing James as.”

Debbie, who recently lost her husband, witnessed first-hand the change.

“I have this tree my husband and I bought in memory of my mother-in-law, and it was 3 feet longer than it is now and you couldn’t see the lawn because it was all full of weeds and grass. And I came home and thought, ‘What in the world happened to my tree?’ and I notice there was a block up on my door that said ‘Make Troy Beautiful and We Matter.’”

The block is Miles’ new way of making his mark on the streets of Troy.

“It’s not just cleaning it’s giving back. It’s putting a smile on someone’s face when they’re having a bad day,” Miles says.

That act is an example of the man James is aiming to be.

“I’m campaigning for a position I can never hold — and that is mayor.  I can’t run for it.  I can’t because of my past, but I’m out here doing putting boots on the ground, even if they’re little boots,” he says.

In just two months, James has hit several spots, leaving his mark wherever he goes.

“Our blocks show where we’ve been. We’ve been on your block because we left a block,” Miles says.

His story doesn’t have that Hollywood ending — not yet anyway. Miles says it’s a process and he’s willing to be patient.

“It’s a struggle, it’s an on and off thing, but this time I’m putting in the footwork to stay that way,” he says.

“Seeing him in the different aspects of life the good, the bad, and today I can’t wait to see tomorrow,” says Debbie.

Now when you see him on the street or in the alleys, Miles says you don’t have to walk the other way, rather say hello and know he’s trying to make a clean start.

“I used to live to die and now I’m dying to live,” James says. “I wake up in the morning and it’s like I’m alive.”