CHICAGO (AP) — A man awarded $20 million after being wrongfully convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl has reopened his Chicago barber college, a year after it was shuttered by the pandemic.

Juan Rivera’s Legacy Barber College reopened last month at a new location in Rogers Park, a Chicago neighborhood that borders Evanston, and it’s already training a new generation of barbers.

Student Juan Robles said Rivera’s story is inspiring because even though he spent more than 19 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Rivera doesn’t hold a grudge against the world.

“He could have spiraled down coming out. Could have been mad at the world but he came up,” Robles told WGN-TV.

Rivera was tried three times for 1992 the rape and murder of Holley Staker, an 11-year-old from Waukegan. His first conviction in 1993, when he was 19, was reversed on appeal and he was granted a new trial. He was convicted again in 1998, and in 2004, a Lake County judge granted Rivera DNA testing and a new trial.

He was convicted in 2009, but that conviction was reversed in January 2012 after DNA evidence led investigators to another suspect. The Illinois appellate court then freed Rivera and barred prosecutors from trying him again.

He later settled a federal lawsuit against prosecutors and police for $20 million.

In 2016, Rivera and his correctional officer while in prison, Bobby Mattison, opened their first barber college, but it closed down last year amid the pandemic.

“The pandemic hit everyone hard. And we closed the doors it was like ‘Man, what are we gonna do now,’” Mattison said.

Anyone can enroll in the Legacy Barber College. So far, eight of its students are community members and 24 are high school or college students.