Some L.A. Marathon Entrants Run From Hard Pasts

Shuffling through stacks of questionnaires filled out by entrants in the upcoming L.A. Marathon . . . Thousands of runners . . . Thousands of stories . . . Mostly routine stuff . . . But a few items catch your eye . . .

Rex Lundquist, age 49, Huntington Beach, high school English teacher and football coach. Q: When did you start running? Any special stories about how you started?

A: Started in ’83. Started for suicidal reasons. I was unemployed, no money, lost my home. I ran to have a heart attack. Turned out that I started feeling better.

Did Lundquist really take up running to kill himself?

“I didn’t care,” he says. “I was right at the bottom and I didn’t see any way out. I had thoughts of suicide.

“I ran a mile in high school once and almost died, and I hadn’t run since then. I had no idea what physical condition my heart was in. I figured if I had a bad heart, I’d find out.

“The first day, I went out and ran as hard and as fast and as long as I could. It was great. I really felt good. Real sore and tired the next day, but I felt like I had accomplished something.”

Rex had been a teacher for 15 years, then quit to start his own loan business. He doubled his income, but soon the prime rate went sky high and the business went gutter low.

For a year, Lundquist couldn’t find work. He has a wife and three teen-agers. They lost their home. Rex wasn’t sure how much longer he could feed them. He was getting ready to play hide-and-seek with an auto repo man.

He was 45. He read somewhere that running can help overcome depression. His brother encouraged him. He ran, he didn’t die and, after a while, he even entered some races. The L.A. Marathon will be his fifth.

“Running helped get me out of depression,” he says. “It did a lot for my ego and self esteem. It helped me get back into teaching. It saved my life.”

Jose Onofre, 18, Santa Ana, valet parking attendant and business-college student. Q: Is there anything unusual about you?

A: About six years ago, I was a gang member. I always wanted to run . . . but it wasn’t cool to the guys I grew up with. They always put me down whenever I would talk about joining the school’s track team. Since I was the smallest kid in the neighborhood, I had to be like them and act like them. . . . To this day, I still regret being in a gang. So now by joining the marathon, I feel good about myself and (want) to prove to people and old friends that it is possible to change for the good.

Jose didn’t enjoy the street version of athletic competition.

“I was involved in a lot of gang fights,” he says. “Seeing friends beat up isn’t the hottest thing you can witness. I’m talking beat up . I got beat up myself a lot but never to the point of being hospitalized.

“I was stabbed once. In Santa Ana, some guys from my gang got chased by the other gang, F-Troop, and we started going at it. I didn’t realize until after the fight that I’d been stabbed, in the lower back. I started walking away, then I couldn’t walk.

“I didn’t go to the hospital because I didn’t want my parents to find out, so my friends patched me up, poured some alcohol on. Actually, it was tequila.”

One time, Onofre stood by helplessly and watched a relative get gunned down and murdered in a drug deal.

About three years ago, he started parking cars, which requires a lot of running. It felt good, so he started training on his own. He enrolled in business school. He wants to be an accountant, or a youth counselor. He even got himself a girlfriend.

“Her parents don’t think of me as me , but as a hoodlum who doesn’t know what he wants out of life. I do know. That’s one reason I’m running the marathon--to prove to them I’m not a bum. And to prove to myself that people do change.”

This will be Jose’s first marathon.

“My goal is to finish, no matter what, even if I have to crawl across the finish line. Maybe I’ll finish close enough to the top that I’ll be on TV, and I can show it to my girlfriend’s parents.”

Robert (Bobby) Ruiz, 35, Van Nuys, pest control company employee.

Q: Why did you decide to run the L.A. Marathon?

A: ‘Cause I’ve been a loser for the last 15 years and I seen all those people who competed (in last year’s marathon), winners all of them, and wanted to join them.”

Got your note pads ready, movie producers?

A year ago, Bobby Ruiz was a Skid Row wino and drug addict. He had just been discharged from the Navy for drug use.

“I was in a rehab center last year, and I seen the L.A. Marathon, the photos and the story, in the paper the next day. One story was a mile-by-mile account of one guy running. It triggered something. I said, ‘Man, I’m gonna do that.’

“I was smoking three packs a day, Pall Mall Reds. I said a prayer. I said, ‘I’ve never done nothing for you for Lent, but if you help me with this, I’ll give up smoking.’

“The first day, I couldn’t run one lap on a 330-yard track, and I barfed that time and the next two or three times I ran.”

He kept running. Every day.

“I’d been trying to stop drinking and doing drugs for over 10 years. It seemed like I was so hopelessly addicted, there was nothing I could do. Since I’ve been running, I haven’t touched nothing. Running has been a big part of my recovery.”

Ruiz’s bad habits had cost him his wife and four kids.

“Yesterday, I ran an 18-mile run, and each of my kids ran part of the way with me. I want them to see their dad as a winner and not as a creepy man.”

This will be Bobby’s first marathon.

“I’m not really a religious guy, but for me, running this marathon is like a prayer to Him, thanking Him.”

In the third mile, the L.A. Marathon cuts through downtown Los Angeles, along Sixth Street, the heart of Skid Row.

“That will be the best part of the race for me. I’ll probably feel a lot of mixed feelings, a lot of pain, and gratitude--that I made it out. I want to run through Skid Row a winner.”