Home at Last : Quartz Hill Tailback Erik Thomas Outruns His Troubled Childhood and Relishes His New Family Ties

As a standout athlete at Quartz Hill High, Erik Thomas knows the life of a champion.

The muscular 5-foot-9, 182-pound junior tailback has rushed for 542 yards and eight touchdowns in the Rebels’ first five games. He is no less sturdy on the wrestling mat, winning the Golden League championship in the 165-pound class last winter. And he added two league championships in the spring, earning varsity track titles in the 100 (10.8 seconds) and 200 meters (22.1).

Off the playing fields, however, life has not been as kind.

Thomas, 17, was abandoned by his family when he was 5 and cut ties with the rest of his family when he ran away from his aunt six years ago. Since 1984, he has lived in a foster home for boys in Lancaster where authority and parental figures come and go with shift changes and job turnover.

Athletic championships? They are commonplace for Thomas. Victories in his personal world, however, have been more difficult to come by.

At least until Leonard and Sarah Thornton entered his life.

On Christmas Day last year, Thomas was the invited guest at the home of the Thorntons, whose son is Thomas’ friend and former teammate. Thomas sat by the fire in front of the glittering Christmas tree, excitedly opening gifts.

Sarah Thornton, a big-hearted 44-year-old in her second marriage, leaned back and looked at the young man sitting among the torn gift wrap, the Christmas lights reflected in his face.

“To see the glow,” she said. “To see him opening gifts. We were around the fireplace. And he knew he was a part of something. It was touching.

“He said to me, ‘Mom, that’s the best Christmas I’ve ever had.’ ”

Thomas’ defenses had been stripped. For once, he enjoyed a victory off the playing fields. He had won a sense of belonging--and found a mom and a dad.

“They didn’t adopt me,” the shy and likable Thomas said. “I just call them that.”

Nobody seems to mind.

Thomas has been running all his life. He runs in track and football--and he ran from an aunt, Claudia Jasper, in Bakersfield in 1984. “She didn’t tell me I could go,” Thomas said. “I just left. I said, ‘Bye. See you.’ ”

Confusion clouds Thomas’ memory of his childhood. He knows he was born in Texas and guesses that he was left with his aunt in Bakersfield when he was “around 5.” He surmises that financial considerations prompted his abandonment. Whatever the reason, he is certain of one fact: If his parents walked in front of him now, he would not recognize them.

The years with his aunt were stormy. Thomas says only that they didn’t get along, that he felt no need to stay. After he left, he headed for the home of his stepfather in Bakersfield--a man who was married to his mother for a brief time.

Thomas’ recollection of his stay with his stepfather, whom he remembers only as “Chip,” also is hazy--he estimates that it lasted about a month before police characterized him as a runaway. The Department of Human Services in Kern County then placed the 11-year-old in a foster home in Lancaster.

The foster home, one of five in the Antelope Valley that form the nonprofit Classic Group Home organization, has provided stability in what has been a mostly unstable life. Thomas’ home sits on a dirt plot in rural Lancaster, and, with its porch and basketball hoop in the back yard, blends into the neighborhood.

As many as six boys between the ages of 10 and 17 live in each foster home and currently three boys live with “house parents”--full-time, live-in couples hired by Classic Group Home. The organization is contracted by the state to house its foster children and is funded largely by Los Angeles County. Social workers based in Lancaster work individually with each child.

In addition, social workers--often couples--are hired as house parents for the foster children in each home. Thomas’ current house parents, Greg and Kris Johnston, moved in just last week.

“We don’t know much about him except that he’s a super polite football star,” Kris Johnston said.

Day-to-day life for Thomas is like that of many teen-agers. He does his chores, eats meals with his house parents and earns television privileges--as long as homework is done. Football teammates provide rides to school, and he plans to use money earned from a summer landscaping job at school to buy a car.

“It’s just like a regular home,” Thomas said with a shrug. He is not one to complain--not even about his unsettled childhood.

“It makes me think,” Thomas said. “I mean, I think about it, but it doesn’t distract me (from athletics).”

Sarah Thornton also thinks about Thomas’ troubled childhood. And looking at Thomas now, she sees the voids.

“He doesn’t seem to mind the home,” she said. “But the thing that makes me unhappy is that he has no chance to get attached to an adult.”

Recently, three calls to the group home yielded different house parents on each occasion.

It is no wonder that Erik’s true home became the athletic arena.

“He knows that he doesn’t have a lot of things that other kids have, as far as family,” said John Albee, Quartz Hill football coach. “So a lot of his family comes from the teammates of the different sports he plays. It’s a special part of his day to be with his fellow athletes and fellow players.”

Thomas is popular with his teammates. He wears a lucky hat each game day, a 1960s Quartz Hill High baseball cap that is sort of a good-natured taboo for the players. “Everybody says, ‘Don’t touch that hat,’ ” Thomas says with a laugh.

He also is popular with his teammates for obvious reasons. His athletic career at Quartz Hill has been a distinguished one. As a freshman, Thomas earned a brief promotion to the varsity football team in the middle of the season. As a sophomore, he gained 507 yards and scored five touchdowns in 68 carries before achieving more success in wrestling and track.

In addition, he qualified last summer for the Junior Olympics in track and he has received football recruiting letters from Iowa, Arizona and Washington. The schools would seem to be impressed with Thomas’ speed in the 40-yard dash, in which he has been timed in 4.3, according to Albee.

Two weeks ago, in a 26-7 win over Division I power San Gorgonio, Thomas displayed his explosive power. With the score tied, 7-7, early in the fourth quarter, Thomas took a pitch, turned upfield and outran the defense for a 57-yard touchdown run.

He finished with 125 yards and three touchdowns, including a 76-yard kickoff return. Quartz Hill is looking for a similar performance tonight when the Rebels (3-2) face Canyon (5-0) in a crucial Golden League opener at Canyon.

“When I think of Erik Thomas? Awesome,” Canyon Coach Harry Welch said. “So fast. I’d love to have him.”

Thomas, however, prefers a low profile.

“People tell me about (my accomplishments),” he said. “But I don’t like to brag about it. That isn’t me.”

Unobtrusive and withdrawn, Thomas is reluctant to show his feelings. Given his turbulent background, who can blame him?

Sarah Thornton doesn’t. She sees something special in Thomas and wants to help shape his life. Sarah, who works as a contract coordinator for a computer company in North Hollywood and Leonard, an aerospace planner in Burbank, have applied to the state for a foster parents’ license. They hope Erik will be living with them soon--perhaps by the end of the school year.

“I think of Erik as an unpolished gem,” Sarah said. “He just needs a little polishing and pounding along to keep him on the right trail. He has done so well.”

Sarah’s son from a previous marriage, Roland Talton, introduced Thomas to the Thorntons’ world. As a freshman, Thomas befriended Talton, a fellow football player for the Rebels now attending Morehouse College in Atlanta.

“He came into the family as a friend, initially,” Sarah recalled. “And then we found out the situation as it did exist--that he was sort of alone. And we wanted to help him. My heart went out to him, and we wanted to step in and let him know that somebody cared.”

It is not easy for Thomas to describe his feelings toward the Thorntons. He answers simply in “uh-huhs” and “yeahs” when asked if he feels close to them.

“They take care of me,” he said.

Slowly, the Thorntons have learned that he is grateful.

“He has come out,” Sarah said. “He was very, very introverted when we first met him. He just didn’t know who to trust. A lot of people have come and gone in his life. But he knows that we’re pretty much here for him. We try to fill some of the voids.”

The Thorntons are among the Rebels’ biggest fans--never missing a game, never missing a chance to see Thomas play, even if it means driving to games in Apple Valley or San Gorgonio.

“They treat him like he’s their own son,” team captain Josh Patterson said. “They’re even on the booster club like he’s their own son.”

Albee said he treats Thomas no differently than other players, and that Thomas wouldn’t want it any other way. Neither would his teammates.

“We treat him the same no matter what,” Patterson said. “Sometimes he gets upset because he’s (at the group home), so we’ll help him out whenever he’s down.”

Thomas’ situation is by no means unique. Albee says that in his 23 years at Quartz Hill, he has coached several other foster children, and, like Thomas, they made themselves a home on the sporting fields.

“For a lot of them, yeah, that’s their love and their joy,” Albee said. “Where they get their rewards.”

Said Sarah Thornton: “He probably loves (athletics) almost as much as eating. It gives him a natural high. That’s his everything. He can know that he’s really good at something.”

For Thomas, the rewards keep growing. A football scholarship from a Division I college seems likely and he might leave Quartz Hill as a three-time league champion in wrestling and track. And he is looking, for the first time in his life, at a family that he might be able to call his own.

Sarah likes to tell the story of last Christmas, when she and her husband gave Thomas money to buy his friends presents. Thomas, it seems, didn’t want to spend it on anybody but mom and dad. The Thorntons persuaded him to do otherwise.

“We had a fight about it,” Sarah said with a laugh. “A friendly fight.”

A fight among friends.