PRODIGAL RETURNS : Johnson Trades Delinquency for Role of Star Decathlete

David Johnson, an uncommon athlete with a common name, is having lunch--a can of soda and a glass of iced tea--at an isolated cafeteria table at Azusa Pacific University. He is talking slowly about what he calls his delinquent past, struggling in particular with this one story.

When he was 16, Johnson said he noticed that a brewery representative had left his car window open. Johnson reached inside the car, grabbed a handful of keys and had instant access to a beer warehouse in his hometown of Missoula, Mont.

For the next six months, he and his friends visited the warehouse, which was filled to the ceiling with cases of beer and wine, and, in a refrigerated room, with wall-to-wall kegs of beer.

Johnson doesn’t remember many details about those six months, except that he suddenly became quite popular at high school parties. He also remembers that, after the locks were changed and he broke in through a window, he was caught by police who later estimated that he and his friends had stolen $5,000 worth of potables.

Because he was a juvenile, and due to move, he got off with a warning.

Telling this story is painful for Johnson, who is obviously uncomfortable with the way his dark past clashes with his bright future. But, speaking slowly and with carefully chosen words, the world’s top-ranked decathlete tells it nonetheless, describing how his faith has altered the course of his life, changing him from a trouble-making adolescent to a record-breaking athlete.

“I’m a lot different than I used to be,” Johnson said. “It’s a miracle that I’ve come from being headed toward a disastrous life to having one with unlimited potential.”

Guided by a strong faith, he has exchanged the keys to excess for the keys to success. With a score of 8,549 at a track and field meet in Houston on June 13, the 26-year-old Montclair resident became the world’s top-ranked decathlete this year.

Johnson’s Houston score was more than 300 points better than his previous high; it was 100 points better than the gold-medal score at last year’s Olympics. Johnson attained the total, the second best by an American, without rest because his training program is designed for him to peak in September. Still, he was only 85 points short of Bruce Jenner’s U.S. record of 8,634, a mark that hasn’t been so seriously challenged since it was set 13 years ago.

“Dave doesn’t have a weakness, not a single weak event,” said Terry Franson, Johnson’s coach for seven years. “I can honestly say that he’s America’s next gold-medal hope in the decathlon. He made that great score in Houston with what were, for him, below average scores in three or four events. I think he will definitely break Bruce Jenner’s record.”

Said decathlon expert Frank Zarnowski:

“His chances of breaking Jenner’s record are better than 50-50. I think he will do it. He is one of the top three decathletes in the world, and that’s significant because no American has been among the top eight in the last decade.”

After the World University Games in West Germany later this month, Johnson will attempt to prove that his Houston score wasn’t a fluke. On Sept. 16-17 in Talence, France, he will go up against the two other men Zarnowski puts in his class, Frenchman Christian Plaziat and East German Christian Schenck.

Call it the battle of Christians, for Johnson, too, is a Christian--by faith if not by name.

Johnson says that no matter where he goes, he visualizes God at his side. In fact, participating in the decathlon is in itself a form of prayer for him.

“When I became a Christian coincided with when I began track in 1981, and I took it as a sign,” he said. “Each time I tried a new event, it was so easy. I was beating people that had been in that event for three or four years on my first try.”

Even before his decathlon days, Johnson had been a well-rounded athlete. He bowled a 220 game while he was in seventh grade and made all-star teams in football and baseball at Crescent Valley High in Missoula.

While on the football team, he met Matt Hirte, a fellow wide receiver who introduced him to fundamental Christianity.

Johnson’s parents, Wilbur and Carolyn, had brought him up as a Roman Catholic, but after spending more and more time with Hirte, Johnson changed his religious views.

And his life style.

He was no longer the kid who spent his afternoons throwing rocks at cars, his evenings breaking into houses in search of money and music albums.

He joined the track team simply because he wanted to make some more disciplined friends. His events were the hurdles, the high jump and the mile relay.

“But I didn’t even know what a decathlon was then,” Johnson said.

“A coach asked me if I knew who Bruce Jenner was and I said, ‘Yeah, isn’t he a movie star?’ I had seen him on ‘CHiPs.’ ”

Realizing he was good at many events but master of none, Johnson took up decathlon his freshman year at Western Oregon State. His father, supervisor for a wood-products company, had been transferred to Corvallis, Ore., and Dave had gone along.

Academic problems forced him to spend his sophomore year at Linn-Benton Junior College near home, but in 1983 he enrolled at Azusa because of the warm weather.

While there, he helped the school to Division III national championships in 1983 and 1984 and he still wears the ring to prove it, along with his 1988 Olympic ring--he finished ninth--and his wedding ring. He married Sherri, a Azusa Pacific student, two years ago.

Struggling financially, he left school 29 credits short of graduation and spent three years working odd jobs while training for the Olympics.

He began attending Azusa Pacific again last semester and is 15 credits shy of a degree in psychology and a minor in physical education.

Graduating is his primary goal, but he does have something else he would like to accomplish.

“I think that if everything is perfect . . . I can break 9,000 points (the world record is 8,847, set in 1984 by Britain’s Daley Thompson),” Johnson said.

“When it’s in God’s hands, 9,000 points is nothing. If Jesus Christ were a decathlete--wow! Have you ever heard of a negative timing in the 100-yard dash?”

Johnson pauses and laughs at the thought, the sound reverberating around the dark, empty locker room where he is dressing.

Perhaps God has a sense of humor. How else do you explain that nine years after Johnson was busted for stealing beer, the Olympic Job Training Program found him a job as an L.A.-based representative of the brewery whose product he once filched?

“They didn’t give me any keys, though,” Johnson says with a grin.