DOING IT HIS WAVE : Life Always Seems to Be a Close Shave for Turbulent Pro Surfer Richie Collins

Last winter, Richie Collins, the born-again, anti-drug surf star who has a shaved head, fits of violence and a penchant for the bizarre, found himself in a precarious situation.

With dusk approaching, he and a buddy had lost their surfboards in 8- to 10-foot surf at Sunset Beach, Hawaii, the renowned North Shore surfing site.

Collins and his friend swam to shore, where Collins grabbed his rhino chaser, a 9-foot board designed for really big surf, and made his way toward the lost boards, half a mile out to sea.

Once he retrieved his board, and the two pieces of his friend’s broken board, Collins began paddling toward shore. Close to the beach, however, he encountered a series of waves rising thunderously, forming a fierce riptide.

Collins paddled and paddled but could make no progress.

He paddled for about an hour, and it was so dark that he could barely see the blackened outline of the shore.

“I started just about crying because I was so freaked out that I couldn’t get out of the water,” he recalled. “I just gave up and started praying to God to help me get in.”

Suddenly, the seas calmed, and Collins paddled in.

“I think it was kind of a religious experience,” he said. “I was so scared out of my mind. I didn’t want to die yet.”

Perhaps Collins, 19, needn’t have worried.

Don’t they say that only the good die young?

Richie Collins of Costa Mesa was brought up to be good. His grandfather was a minister. His father, a famous surfboard maker, was a believer.

Collins, for his part, went to Christian schools and shunned the party scene. He denounces drinking alcohol and taking drugs. He and his Christian buddies may wear Mohawk cuts or shaved heads, but they have nothing in common with the skinheads who are known for violent acts against minorities.

Yet, the temptations surrounding surfing have tested Collins and his high-voltage personality.

When he was 14, he got his front teeth knocked out, fighting with a 27-year-old man over a wave.

Many more such skirmishes followed.

But last summer at 54th Street, Newport Beach, where the area’s best surfers come to shine, Collins’ struggles were never more evident.

He had just completed a session, a surfer’s euphemism for catching some waves. Unlike most others, Collins always surfs as hard as he can, and it showed. He was beat.

As he laid his surfboard on the ground and prepared to peel off his wet suit, he was jumped from behind.

He didn’t have a chance, and by the time the attacker had finished, Collins’ face was rearranged. He spent 3 hours in the hospital, receiving 75 facial stitches. His lip had to be sewed on, and his body simply had to heal.

The attacker had been waiting 6 weeks to get even with Collins. They had gotten into a row over a wave at the Corona del Mar harbor mouth--the usual frustrations spilling over when there are too few waves and too many surfers. A lot of name calling and a little bit of pushing. Collins said he had planned to apologize the next time he saw the other surfer.

Perhaps for anyone else, the incident would have ended at Corona del Mar beach. But this was Richie Collins, whose loudmouthed, punk-like behavior has made him one of the most talked about--and disliked--surfers in decades.

His upbringing--including the study of karate--tells him to be respectful, but his adolescent body counter reacts.

If he is unhappy with his surfing, he may butt his head against a brick wall, punch a hole into one of his custom-made surfboards that he designs, “Or I will break down and just pray to God,” he said.

“A Christian isn’t laid back. They can really get . . . off. It’s really hard for me because ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be the best.”

He told Surfer magazine: “You don’t have to be totally humble to be a Christian. . . . I follow my own way, but I know it’s right. A lot of Christians, you won’t understand where I’m coming from, and I’m sorry if I don’t follow it the same way you do. But I’m just too aggravated and stressed to be humble.”

From surfing?

Indeed, some Christians don’t understand. According to Joey Buran, a retired professional surfer who is an assistant pastor at the Calvary Chapel of Vista, Calif., Collins has it backward.

“What he does is so contradictory as to what Christianity is,” said Buran, who has known Collins for years. “He is trying to mold God to fit him. It doesn’t work that way. The fact that he is young is not an excuse. He has been to enough Bible studies to know what to do.”

What Collins does is take out his aggressions on himself, his boards, other surfers in the water, and the agitation continues into the night with violent dreams.

“One time, I woke up and weighed 5 pounds less,” he said. “I have to conserve my energy when I’m on the world tour because I wear myself out when I sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I’m drained already.”

Collins dreams he is in the jungles of Vietnam, fighting against impossible odds to annihilate enemy troops. Or perhaps he is smashing a gang of youths who challenge him at some local haunt.

“I try to be really mellow and be friends with everybody, but just by watching violent movies growing up I dig watching people get in fights,” he said. “When you watch boxing, you get amped. It really excites me. When you hear Reagan bombed someone, I say, ‘Yeah, get ‘em Reagan.’ ”

Just as easily, though, Collins shows remorse over his behavior.

“A lot of people don’t understand me,” he said. “I do have a lot of things eating away at me. So much stress. When I blow up, I blow up. I try to stay as mellow as possible until the next time.”

Last January, he was on the way to the beach from his Costa Mesa home when he got into a traffic accident. A woman, he claims, had blocked traffic at an intersection to buy flowers from a sidewalk vendor. Irked, Collins made his way around her, yelling and finger waving. He also collided with a car making a left turn.

Collins didn’t have insurance, and was so infuriated that he started toward the woman driver, this lanky 6-foot 1-inch youth with a shaved head and a vulgar mouth.

“She rolled her window up and started driving at me,” Collins recalled. “I was about to put my fist through her window and grab her by the neck, but this little thing in the back of my head said if I do that, I’d get in big trouble.”

Then the man whose car had been hit pulled over and Collins turned toward him.

“I was so aggravated I was ready to kill,” Collins said. “My hand was already messed up from punching another window, so I couldn’t break mine. I couldn’t punch my car because I would have broken my hand completely.”

So he chose to head-butt his own car window for impact.

“I had big, huge scabs and cuts on my forearm,” he said “I was so stoked that I broke the window.”

It had an effect. Witnesses suddenly began minding their own business. The woman and man left without filing police reports.

And Collins went surfing.

Such conduct would receive scant mention were it not for Collins’ extraordinary skill as a surfer. He went from 30th to the top 16 on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ tour that ended recently in Hawaii, and is considered to be on the verge of reshaping the sport.

“He’s one of the best surfers I’ve ever seen,” Matt Warshaw of Surfer magazine said. “He is a young guy who wants to blow everyone out any way he can. He wants to confuse them. He’s done it really well. It’s not just a look or voice. He’s a major talent.

“He’s 19 and famous, and he’s running with it. I’m not even sure he is convinced at what he says about himself.”

What he says in the sport’s magazines is that some of the competitors who are rated higher than he aren’t that good. Egos have been bruised and jealousies intensified.

Furthermore, he says he doesn’t surf for fun, that his actions are geared toward winning the world championship. That has riled many who consider the sport the ultimate in leisure activity.

“Richie has struck an uncertainty in surfing,” Warshaw said. “He has broken the mold completely and that’s what surfing has been all about.”

On the ASP international circuit, Collins is a pariah.

“A lot of the guys just think he’s weird,” said Marty Thomas, one of the top young pros from Sunset Beach, Hawaii, who has surfed against Collins since they were kids.

When others are carousing--most pros are in their early 20s--Collins is corralling his energy to let it loose during competition. He said he can’t stand the smell of beer or cigarette smoke, so he prefers to room alone on the tour.

“It’s like he has alienated himself to concentrate more,” Thomas said.

Whereas most of the pros let their typically blond locks grow and are friendly with women on the beach, Collins keeps his hair unfashionably short.

“I want to look ugly,” he said.

He once said he was considering growing his hair out to talk to girls. But if they got too close, he said he would shave it again because he did not want any distractions.

Collins recently ended a relationship, but was at a loss to explain why. He struggled with an explanation and just gave up, shrugging it off.

Though Collins travels to Australia, Brazil, England, France, Japan and South Africa, he has seen little of the world except the surfers’ ports of call.

Collins, who turned pro when he was 14, has been going to Hawaii since he was 11. The glamour of traveling to surf contests has lost its luster.

“It’s the same thing over and over and over again,” he said.

And being an unchaperoned teen-ager working in some far-off land can be trying. Collins has relied on an understanding family during the toughest of times.

He has a special bond with his sister Durrane, 20, and her husband, Greg Mungall, one of the best surfers to come from Florida. His mother, Terralea, was the backbone of the family surfboard business, and his father, Lance, has been Richie’s driving force.

When Collins joined the ASP world tour at 17, he almost quit immediately.

“Rich called me crying one time,” said his father. “The other people were picking on him. . . . It’s like learning how to join society. Most kids are looking for help, but the direction is way off base.”

The call home eased his fears and he continued.

Collins has looked to his father as the man he most wants to please. And now that Lance is going through rough times with a separation, Richie wants to be there to help. Last winter, he dropped out of the competition early to be with his family during the holidays. He says he hopes that his parents will have a reconciliation, and that he is not worrying as much these days.

But the family division is painful for all involved: “It has been the most devastating thing to my kids of anything that could have happened,” said Terralea, who lives in Chino.

“He has a lot of anger over it,” said his grandmother, Margie Pantzar.

And said longtime friend Dylan Crouch of Newport Beach: “I think he takes it out on the waves when he surfs.”

The strong emotions are tied to an unconventional but happy upbringing. Collins first stepped into the ocean to ride the white water with Durrane when they were 2 and 3 years old.

Lance, who started the business at the prodding of his wife, made miniature surfboards for the youngsters to splash around on while he went surfing. But son always wanted to tag along and by the time Richie was 5, he was riding real surfboards. At 7, he knew that he wanted to be a surf star, although then he thought it would be a glamorous occupation.

At first, the parents were careful not to pressure their son. His progression happened naturally. Lance went surfing, Richie and friends would go too.

Still, Durrane said her father could be harsh.

One day, when Richie was about 7, he was hit by a car while riding a bicycle. He suffered a broken leg. His mother ran into their surfboard shop in a panic. But Lance just stood there and rolled his eyes.

“Lance went over to Richie who was laying in the street and just looked at him and said, ‘You’re OK,’ ” said Danny Kwak, then a professional surfer working for Collins. “He has given Richie a lot of his toughness, but there is a love there.”

Another time, after winning an amateur contest as an 11-year-old, Richie was scolded by his father in front of all the other competitors because he had surfed poorly and embarrassed Lance.

“He would always call me a kook (someone who can’t surf),” Collins said. “That time, all the kids went, ‘What? You just won!’ I was thinking, this is my dad who tells me this, what a . . . I’ll show him. I’m going to get so good . . . Now, I wish sometimes he would call me a kook again.”

When Richie decided to quit high school because it interfered with his surfing career, his father beat him up.

“I almost went too far,” Lance said. “Richie almost ran away.”

Lance, who is partially deaf, may have been unyielding, but he always took his son surfing.

“It was never anything you get used to,” said Pantzar, Collins’ grandmother who, along with his 89-year-old great-grandmother, attends as many of Richie’s contests as possible. “They used to surf Christmas morning and we’d have to wait before we could start the family gathering.”

Indeed, their lives centered on surfing.

Lance and Terralea were busy running a mom and pop surfboard company--Lance hand-making the boards and Terralea taking care of the operation.

Instead of playing after school, Richie and his friends hung out at the shop, absorbing everything said and done. Lance sponsored some of the area’s best pros so Richie got a taste of what it would take to realize his dream.

Not only was Collins learning surfing skills, but he was becoming a surfboard craftsman.

Lance said that Richie and friends started pestering him to make them surfboards, and he finally said, “OK, here is a Styrofoam blank. Now make your own.”

Richie had been repairing dings--holes in surfboards--since he was 7, so he was ready to tackle a board.

Now, as Collins emerges as one of the world’s best surfers, he is equally respected as a surfboard designer, a career he plans to cultivate once his competitive days end in about 3 years.

Collins said that sometimes he thinks about quitting the tour, which will start again in late February, so he can stay home with his family and make surfboards. But then, he continues, striving to become world champion.

More than talent, it is moxie that keeps Collins headed toward that goal.

The trait is best illustrated in the maneuvers he tries despite a back injury he suffered when he was an accomplished board sailor 6 years ago. He still suffers from the injury, which recently was diagnosed as a crushed lower vertebra.

“It’s almost insane that he keeps up the level of surfing he does and with the moves he does considering his back,” said Tim Brown, a Newport Beach chiropractor. “He does tricks that cause him to land in awkward positions. He gets his body in the worst torqued positions.”

Brown has taught Collins stretching exercises and given him a more nutritious diet to build up his endurance, which is crucial in contest surfing.

Collins said he has taken trips around the world and ended the flight unable to walk. But with proper care, he was in the water the next day, competing aggressively.

With cat-footed agility, Collins has changed the face of surfing with a radical new maneuver called floaters. He rides on top of the tubed portion of the wave, and then lands in the shallow water in front of the breaking wave, which is dangerous.

Why take the risk?

“For some reason, property, winning and friends are more important, and everything around me is more important to me than myself,” he said.

Such reckless abandon has so far proved financially beneficial.

Collins earned about $100,000 last year. He said he hopes to save about $20,000 of that and eventually buy a house. He said his earnings, which include contest purses and surf-wear sponsors’ payments, also pay for his travel to the 30 or so contests.

Collins said that his expenditures are greater than most other professionals’ because of his insistence on staying alone in nice hotels.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to surf as well,” he said.

His biggest extravagance, though, is a souped-up truck for off-road jumping and bouts of wild driving in Baja California. He also bought a motorcycle. His friends say he drives the way he surfs--full-speed ahead.

So, he tempts providence on land as well as sea. And as the clock ticks, Collins realizes time is of the essence. Surf stars, rise and fall quickly, and the time in between is seldom long.

Now, a freight-train fast wall of blue water rises to great heights lifting Collins higher, higher, higher, until he can see the apex for that millisecond.

But soon it will disappear.

And, Collins knows, so will he.