Ex-Boxing Champ Chacon Missing En Route to Arizona

Police in two states began searching Tuesday for former featherweight boxing champion Bobby Chacon, who has not been seen since he and a friend left the ex-boxer’s Pacoima home 11 days ago on their way to Arizona, authorities said.

Chacon, 41, and Joe Valdez of Sunland left the Pacoima house Chacon shares with his mother on July 2, police said. Valdez was driving Chacon to Lake Havasu, Ariz., to retrieve Chacon’s pickup truck from a repair shop, Los Angeles Police Detective Ken McCourt said.

On July 6, Valdez called Chacon’s mother from Mesa, Ariz., and asked for the telephone number of Deborah Chacon, the boxer’s estranged wife, who lives in Mesa, McCourt said.

Police said the boxer’s mother did not have the telephone number and that neither of the men called Deborah Chacon.

On Sunday, Deborah Chacon, who has been separated from the ex-boxer for about nine months, reported her husband missing. Los Angeles authorities notified their counterparts in Mesa on Tuesday morning, McCourt said.

Although police do not suspect foul play, McCourt said Chacon’s wife was concerned about her husband’s mental health and was worried about his safety.

Neither Los Angeles nor Mesa police have any leads.

“We’ve been to a couple of locations, but no one was at home,” said Mesa Police Investigator Margie Brennan. “We’re waiting to get in contact with his wife.”

Chacon’s truck has not been picked up in Lake Havasu, McCourt said.

Chacon’s professional boxing career began in 1972 with 19 consecutive victories. He later won the World Boxing Council’s featherweight and super-featherweight titles.

He also has had a series of tragedies and brushes with the law that date back to his days at San Fernando High School in the mid-1960s. As a youth, Chacon was arrested on drug and burglary charges, but not convicted.

After his first wife committed suicide in 1982, Chacon remarried three times. In 1984, he was placed on probation after being convicted of beating his second wife. In 1987, he was sentenced to six months in jail in Oroville, Calif., for violating that probation after investigators found alcohol in his house and a trace of marijuana in his urine.

In 1991, one of his sons was gunned down in a gang-related killing in Panorama City.