FORMER OKLAHOMA UNIVERSITY RUNNING BACK ADRIAN PETERSON smiles while holding up a jersey after being selected by the Minnesota Vikings in the 2007 NFL Draft. Peterson was the No. 7 pick overall during Saturday's festivities at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Eden Prairie, Minn. ? For about five years during the 1990s, Nelson Peterson coached his son’s youth sports teams, traveled the country with his AAU basketball squad and considered himself a good father. He also sold crack cocaine out of a Wal-Mart warehouse in Palestine, Texas.

Until, of course, that fateful day in 1998. Federal agents closed in, putting Peterson out of business and behind bars for eight years – or the entire length of young Adrian Peterson’s teenage years.

“It was a hard time for me with my dad being snatched out of my life like that,” Adrian said. “But I had to find a way to cope with it.”

Last weekend, less than 24 hours after the Vikings had selected him with the seventh overall pick in the NFL draft, was the culmination of just how far Adrian has come. The former University of Oklahoma running back was basking in the afterglow while seated between Nelson and his mother, Bonita, inside the Vikings’ Winter Park facility Sunday.

“Adrian’s a pretty unique kid,” Bonita said. “He’s had big obstacles to overcome in his life. But with a lot of prayers, we made it from Point A to Point B.”

Peterson has experienced a lifetime of heartache in his 22 years. When he was 7, he saw his older brother, Brian, 8, get struck by a drunken driver and killed while riding his bike. Then, this February, on the eve of the NFL scouting combine, Peterson discovered that his stepbrother, Chris Parish, had been shot and killed in Houston. An elite draft prospect who could have skipped the workout, Peterson impressed teams with an outstanding workout that included a 4.38-second 40-yard dash.

“The strength of God has helped me,” Peterson said. “Just knowing that he will never give you more than you can handle or bear. It’s really how you take everything in and what you make of it. Just look at it in a positive way instead of hanging my head down and having a reason for failure.”

Nelson Peterson was raised by two loving, hard-working parents. Drugs weren’t a part of his childhood, he said.

But drugs infected his adult life. According to court documents obtained by the Dallas Morning News for a story last fall, Nelson and 22 others were charged with running a crack cocaine operation that did $4 million in sales.

“I was a young guy who made a mistake,” Nelson said Sunday. “I got involved in the drug world that I shouldn’t have gotten involved in. I was involved in selling drugs and laundering money and stuff like that. I never used them myself.”

He received a 10-year sentence and spent the first two years in the Texarkana, Texas, Federal Corrections Institution.

For eight years, Adrian visited his father on weekends and spoke to him on the phone twice a week. Sometimes more.

Nelson was released from a halfway house in Oklahoma City late last fall. He attended the Sooners’ game against Iowa State on Oct. 14. It was the first time he saw Adrian play in person since pee-wee leagues, and it also was the game in which Peterson broke his collarbone.