S'pore man, 30, was born in Sembawang bushes, raised in children’s home, & finally became a cabin crew. Then he tried to end his life.

For most Singaporean kids born in the 90s, childhood consists of playing block catching, running to get a S$1 ice cream sandwich before the uncle rides off, and if you're unlucky, spending some time after school at tuition.

For Dino Isaac, however, there was absolutely none of that.

Found in the bushes

That was how Dino turned earthside, almost quite literally, in an open space surrounded by bushes.

Born at 9:15am, his birth certificate records the location plainly:

“Growing up, my relatives used to call me Mowgli,” he laughs. “Just like the jungle boy in The Jungle Book, because of my place of birth.”

Dino is animated and expressive, frequently punctuating his sentences with his hands.

It is easy to see how the video in which he narrated his journey — from being born among the bushes to becoming a Singapore Airlines (SIA) cabin crew member — went viral.

At this point, it has amassed over 200,000 views and more than 400 comments.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Dino Isaac (@dinoisaac.sg)

His smile remains even when the memories turn dark.

Dino explained how he was given away right after being born, as his mother did not have a place to stay. The first relatives were kind. The next few, however, were not as charitable.

“This relative was just so mean to me. They beat me up, they abused me,” he recalls, matter-of-factly.

“Her daughters would pinch and poke me. She would even break my arm. When I was three years old, she twisted it and broke it because I was crying loudly.”

The memory has stayed with him ever since — quite literally etched into his body, as he extended his arms to show the scar left by the incident.

“After that, my mom drew the line and just took me away from them because I was covered in bruises. My mother had nowhere else to go, so that's how we ended up sleeping and living under a highway for about a few weeks.”

In the day, while his mother worked as a cleaner, she would drop him off at various half-constructed or half-demolished abandoned buildings.

Just a child, he would stand still waiting for his mother's return, while the day grew steadily darker and the "creepy-crawlies" around him slowly crept out.

“Thou art of the jungle and not of the jungle,” Bagheera, both panther and mentor, tells Mowgli in The Jungle Book, and the early years of Dino’s life would be marked by such transitory places.

For a brief period after that, Dino and his mother moved into a five-room HDB flat in Queenstown, purchased by his father. On paper, it looked like their life would finally turn around.

Happy endings, however, do not involve fathers with a streak of violence.

He recalled how his father would stumble home, reeking of alcohol and in a foul mood.

There were beatings, arguments, and nights when Dino and his siblings had to hide at playgrounds for safety.

Teachers eventually noticed the bruises, and the authorities intervened.

You are not like the rest

At the age of five, Dino entered Gracehaven before moving to The Salvation Army Haven children’s home. This was where he would spend most of his childhood, residing there till he was around 15 years old.

At church, he would watch other children with their parents — children who didn’t flinch at the sight of their fathers, children who could hold their mothers’ hands.

“I knew that I was different,” he says quietly. “I was always very envious.”

Still, there were moments of childhood.

On some Sundays, the home brought the children to Haw Par Villa. There, they would run across pathways, playing hide-and-seek with the other children.

They darted between statues and staircases, hiding behind painted mythological figures and stone railings, their laughter echoing through the cultural park.

Life at Haven also provided a routine.

On weekdays, a house parent would drive the younger children in a van to school.

And like most Singaporean children, they too had to do chores.

They had to clean the toilets and wash the dishes, occasionally giggling when one of them tried to skive or slip off to play, as a child naturally does.

The rest of the week followed in a neat, orderly manner: Thursdays brought praise and worship. Fridays meant swimming. Sundays were for church.

And sometimes, if they asked nicely, outings to West Coast Park or Haw Par Villa.

“I think when I was in Haven, I was definitely grateful that I was away from my mother,” he says.

"He was a monster, but I cried"

Haven was also when Dino saw his father again during custody proceedings.

This was the man who had loomed large in his childhood as the one who would come home drunk, beating his mother until blood streaked the walls.

Once, he had been so enraged that he tried to topple a wardrobe onto Dino, a blow his mother barely stopped with her arm.

This had left behind a scar she still carried today.

“I was scared of him,” Dino says, as his eyes darted away. “He was a monster.”

But this time round, in a vast courtroom, the man was brought before him in chains.

“(My parents) were going through a divorce, and I had to go to court very often, and that was the first time that I saw my dad right after he had been missing," he said.

“A policeman brought him into the courtroom. My mom was beside me, and then I was just this tiny little human being in this huge courtroom, and the judge is telling me to answer 'yes, ma'am, no, ma'am'.”

When Dino was 12, his father was released from prison and placed in a rehabilitation centre, where the residents could go on a trip to Tioman Island and had to bring one of their children.

Dino recalled not wanting to go because he was so frightened of his father.

The fateful day arrived, and Dino remembered standing there as his father gradually approached him, only to brush right past.

“He went to another Indian boy and grabbed his arm and said, ‘Dino let's go’. He didn't even recognise me. He didn’t even know what I looked like.”

On the trip to Tioman Island, Dino didn't dare to look his father in the eyes whenever the man tried speaking to him.

“The kids had to sit on the jet ski with their own dad, but I chose to sit with the pastor instead, because in my mind, I thought my father would drown me or do something to me. That's how frightened I was of him.”

At night, he refused to sleep in the same room as his father, choosing instead to run and hide as he once had in childhood, fleeing to the playground in the middle of the night to escape his father’s volatile temper.

That fear would soon be removed.

When Dino was 13, a house parent told him he would not be going to school that day.

His father had been killed.

“All I did was cry. I cried for hours, and I know I don't have a relationship with him, but as a young boy, just 13 years old, it was such tragic news for me to hear that my father was murdered.”

At this point, Dino’s eyes were shiny, the pauses between his answers growing longer and longer.

“I know I should never wish that on somebody (but) it was a blessing for my safety," he guiltily confessed.

“Even though he was my father, I'm supposed to love him. He was also my abuser and... I'm destroyed, you know, today, because of him.”

From the concrete jungle to the skies

After leaving the children’s home at 15 and graduating from ITE, he served his national service as an emergency medical technician with the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

Towards the end of his national service, his Encik advised him to try to be a cabin crew member, telling him that he was well-groomed and well-spoken.

“I never knew what a flight steward did,” Dino said. “But when I passed Scoot, SilkAir and SIA on my first try, it validated that what my Encik saw in me was right.”

At 22, he became a full-fledged flight attendant with Singapore Airlines.

On his first flight to London, Dino said he sat in his crew seat and teared up thinking about how far he had come in life, literally and figuratively.

For a young man who had once slept under a highway, earning up to S$6,000 a month felt surreal, but it wasn't the travel or the pay that moved him the most.

“I had my own bed. Imagine that,” he laughed, almost in disbelief.

With his very first paycheck, Dino used it to buy something that most would consider a bare necessity: Blankets and pillows.

“But from an expensive Japanese brand,” Dino interjects with a laugh.

Dino would wear the SIA uniform with pride for five years.

“Because of this job, I believed this is not a bad life after all.”

But that was when the loneliness hit, and the little boy who once ran away from the world returned.

Still something missing

In October 2025, Dino attempted to take his own life.

By then, the external markers of success — travel, income, independence — were no longer enough to keep him going.

“I thought that in life, everybody's goal was to travel the world, so we work and save a lot of money, and towards the end of our life, we retire and travel. But my end became my beginning.”

He put on a smile for work. His social media showed him jetting across the world — posing on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, lounging against the backdrop of the Swiss Alps — with no hint of the turmoil beneath.

“I remember telling my friends that this is the best job I've ever had, and I told my batch girls as well, if I ever wanted to quit, please remind me that I love this job.”

Each time he returned to his hotel room, the darkness got heavier. His rental condominium, which he had painstakingly furnished, seemed cold and sterile.

At this point, Dino left SIA and started working as a manager at an F&B chain. Things, however, continued to spiral.

“The only thing that went through my mind was: 'I hate this. I hate this. Why am I even saving money?' Yes, I had a good salary and good prospects, but like, what's the point? Buy a house and then what? I'm still gonna be lonely next time.”

One day, after work, he returned home and calmly took a rope.

The attempt lasted for about 30 seconds before the rope snapped. He thought, even at that, he failed.

Dino remembered sobbing endlessly, thinking that the only person he would have missed was his dog, Cookie.

And then his mother came home:

"I gave her a hug. She was stiff as a plank. She's not a hugger. Then I showed her my bruise and I told her, Ma, I think I need to go to IMH.”

Finding purpose

Dino stayed at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for about a month.

When he was warded there, Dino described the doctors as being "shocked" at how jovial he was.

“The doctor said this is the first time I've seen a patient this happy to be in IMH. I said, 'Doctor, the world outside is worse, have you seen the news?'”

There, Dino had time — perhaps for the first time — to sit still and reflect on what had happened.

It was there, in the enforced quietness of therapy, reflection and prescriptions, that something shifted.

The prospects of becoming a social worker dawned upon him.

“I thought that, yes, the world is tumultuous. It's somewhere I don't want to be, but maybe I can make it into a place where I want to be.”

Now at 30, Dino has applied to Nanyang Polytechnic to study social work.

“I’m not saying you have to go through shit to be a good social worker,” he said carefully. “But lived experience matters. When you’ve had to fend for survival, no family to turn to, you understand certain things differently.”

He wants to be someone children in care can relate to, not just from theory, but from recognition as well.

“I never want to see another child going through what I went through. A lot of these kids, they can't speak up because they're too young or too afraid, but I'm going to be that person for them."

Then, with a little sheepish burst of laughter:

“I just want to be that light, lor. Damn cringe, but it's true la.”

Reconciliation

He has also slowly reconciled with his mother. They now live together in her government rental flat in Commonwealth.

“I felt like she was 50 per cent of the reason why I had to go through a lot of the things that I went through,” he says.

However, he began to see her differently — not only as the mother who had failed him, but as a woman who had also endured abuse, who had done what she could with what little she had.

As Anthony Bourdain once said, “You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.” For Dino, it was his mother’s cooking that slowly helped mend what had once been broken.

Describing his mum as an "amazing cook", Dino has been picking up some kitchen skills from her.

But don't picture the stereotypical imagery of playful nags between a mother and a son in the kitchen, though.

Instead, Dino's mum watches carefully, offering small corrections, adjusting the flame, nodding when it looks right.

It is her way of showing love now — quiet, careful, and a far cry from the chaos that once defined Dino's childhood.

Helplines

If you or someone you know are in mental distress, here are some hotlines you can call to seek help, advice, or just a listening ear:

• National mindline.sg Hotline: 1771 (24 hours)
• National mindline.sg WhatsApp: 66691771 (24 hours)
• SOS 24-hour Hotline: 1-767
• Singapore Association for Mental Health: 1800-283-7019
• Centre for Domestic Employees: 1800 225 5233 (24 hours)
• Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Social Support and Training: 1800 339 4357 (24 hours)
• HOME (migrant worker): +65 6341 5535 (WhatsApp / Viber / SMS)
• HOME (domestic worker): +65 9787 3122 (WhatsApp / SMS / Call)
• SHECARES@SCWO: Call: 8001 01 4616 | WhatsApp: 8985 5528 (For targets of online harms)
• National Anti-Violence and Sexual Harassment Helpline (NAVH): 1800-777-0000

Top image courtesy of Dino and Mothership