Bad-Boy Surfer Comes Clean : San Clemente’s Andino Leaves Fast Lane for Better Life

It’s a whole new world when Dino Andino surfs the pier these days.

Jackie’s Cafe, the biker bar where fights were as common as spilled beer, was vacated a few years ago. Most of the hard-core kids who surfed the pier now go to T-Street or Lower Trestles.

This pier isn’t the one Dino remembers. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, you had to be tough just to paddle out in the lineup.

Dino remembers the pier when it was rad. When he bummed quarters from the locals to invest in pinball. When he got into fights. When it was a party. All by his eighth birthday.

“The pier used to be where all the bikers and the gnarly crew hung out,” he said. “The police wouldn’t even go down there, it was so bad.”

With little supervision, his lifestyle became as wild and unpredictable as the waves he surfed each day. Trouble went with the territory.

“I was a little street urchin back then,” he said. “I was down at the pier every day.”

Sixteen years later, Andino’s world has stretched far past the pier’s limits. A high school dropout, he travels the world as a professional surfer.

Entering his third year on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ tour, Andino makes six figures in prize money and endorsements and owns two modest homes in San Clemente. So much for bumming quarters.

After winning the U.S. championship in 1990, he joined the world tour and was named rookie of the year. He finished 23rd last year, a finish he calls disappointing.

“I’ve been way more serious the past three months than the last two years on the tour,” said Andino, who’s competing in next week’s Op Pro.

“I’m back in touch with my roots. I spun out after I won the U.S. championship. I was partying all the time. I’ve decided that I can’t be some low-life kid. I want to be somebody.”

Everybody wants to know about the name. Was he really named after Fred Flintstone’s pet dinosaur?

For the record, his name is Reinol Andino, the same as his father. His nickname is Dino, the same as his father.

Andino, 24, is only 5 feet 8, but he stands out, even among a surfing crowd.

With his scruffy beard, dishwater blonde mop tucked under a floppy hat, he looks more like Jeff Spicoli than Sean Penn did.

He says he will always look like a rebel. He just doesn’t want to act like one.

“People would see me (as a kid) and say, ‘He’s bad news,’ ” he said. “They would say, ‘Look at him. He’s gnarly, he’s scary.’ ”

To others, he’s friendly, low-key and completely harmless. He’s just Dino.

“Dino always reminds me of a cute little puppy,” said Ian Cairns, who coached Andino to two National Scholastic Surfing Assn. titles in the 1980s.

“He’s always hanging around, tail wagging and his tongue out, like he’s so stoked just to see you. He had a happy personality as a kid, and he’s still that way.”

Andino says San Clemente surfers grew up in one of two social circles. Clean-cut kids surfed Trafalgar Lane, T-Street to the locals. Andino and the kids who surfed the pier grew their hair long and got into trouble.

The pier had the hard-core surfers. Jim Hogan, a champion wrestler at San Clemente High, was the first pier kid to win big on the U.S. tour. Then came Andino and Matt (Wildman) Archbold. Together, they were known as the tour’s “San Clemente Mafia.”

Andino sought an identity with surfing, having had little guidance at home.

He was 12 when he met his father, who was on the road, playing in rock bands. His mother, Linda Ritchie, was “always off doing her own thing.” His grandmother helped raise him, when he wasn’t raising hell at the pier.

“I pretty much grew up on my own,” he said. “My grandma told me to be home at 10 or 12 at night, but I could do what I wanted.

“I was hanging around guys who were 18 or 20 years old. All the things kids go through when they’re 18 or 19, I went through when I was 12.”

Some of it was painful to deal with.

Bar fights between bikers and Marines often spilled into the streets. Dino was right there watching--when he wasn’t getting beat up himself.

“When you gave the locals down there trouble,” he said, “they beat you up and threw you in a trash can. Guys did that to me all the time. I was little, and I got thrown in a lot of trash cans.”

He was thrown into a contest at 11. Chris McElroy, a San Clemente surfboard shaper who befriended him, took him down to a National Scholastic Surfing Assn. event in Del Mar. Andino finished second.

“All the way home, I was thinking that surfing was what I wanted to do the rest of my life,” he said.

Andino won two NSSA titles and competed on the national team. But he struggled to maintain academic eligibility.

He says he attended San Clemente High for a year, followed by a year at a continuation school. He dropped out at 15, after his sophomore year, and turned pro.

Andino was told that several newspaper articles referred to him as “a 1987 San Clemente High graduate,” but he’s not listed as a graduate by the Capistrano Unified School District.

“Graduate,” he snarled. “Yeah, right.”

He shrugged when asked why he quit school.

“I’m going against all odds,” he said. “They wrote me off long ago.”

Who?

“Everybody.”

Wearing a black and purple wetsuit, Andino sits on the judges’ scaffolding and waits for his heat at a recent contest in Oceanside.

He cheers for Archbold, who is struggling to get through his heat.

Andino and Archbold moved up through the surfing ranks together, although their careers have taken different turns in recent years.

While Andino has made it to the world tour, Archbold has had frequent battles with alcohol and drug abuse. He has been in and out of jail and rehabilitation clinics over the last three years.

Archbold’s problems have been warnings for Andino. At times, they were headed down similarly troubled roads.

Andino, dedicated to winning the U.S. title, gave up his partying lifestyle in the late 1980s. He won eight Bud Pro surfing tour contests, including three in a row at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach.

He finished second overall in 1988 and 1989, and also surfed well in a few world tour contests--finishing ninth at the 1988 Op Pro and fifth the following year.

But after winning the U.S. championship in 1990, he took celebrating to extremes.

“It was like, ‘Wow, my job is done, it’s party time again,’ ” Andino said.

An eight-year relationship with his girlfriend crumbled when he began traveling with the world tour. His stability went with it.

“I just cruised for a while,” he said. “I wasn’t in touch with my roots.”

“Cruising” included drinking, smoking and partying until all hours. It was one girl after another, night after night.

“Girls were my main problem,” he said. “People used to use me as an example. They said, ‘Wow, look at Dino, look at all the chicks he gets.’ People used me as an example that you could party hard and still win.”

Andino discovered other results at the expense of Archbold, whose personal problems have kept him from reaching his world-champion potential.

After feeling some pressure from his sponsors, Andino decided he should come clean when the world tour started in April. No more partying.

It has been tough, but Andino says he stuck with his training program. He has a steady girlfriend and is taking his career seriously for the first time in nearly three years.

“I’m 100% sober now,” he said.

Andino struggled somewhat in the tour’s first two events in Australia, finishing 33rd in each. But in the past month, he made the finals and finished third in two world qualifying contests.

“My feeling is that we haven’t seen the last of Dino,” Cairns said. “He’s just going through a phase. I see him getting better.”

Things have changed for Andino.

He’s reminded of that every time he surfs the pier. Families come to the beach there. The handful of high school kids hanging out there are clean-cut. No more bikers or rowdy Marines.

If his neighborhood cleaned up its act, he figures, so can he.

Andino’s Career

Year Finish 1988 Second on U.S. tour 1989 Second on U.S. tour 1990 U.S. champion 1991 World tour rookie of year (39th) 1992 23rd on world tour