Ex-Titan Gets His Life, Lives of Others on Track

Cut by the Oakland Raiders. Frozen out of the Canadian Football League. Cut again by the Buffalo Bills. Leonard King was down to his fourth and final shot at a career in professional football--a tryout with the Oakland Invaders of the USFL--and he was desperate.

“I wasn’t in shape,” King remembers, “so I started training on steroids and cocaine.”

Steroids to build his biceps, cocaine to amp his energy level for marathon bench-press sessions in the weight room.

“I was trying to go 24 hours, around the clock,” King says. “I really wanted to make it this time.”

Frank Merriwell never stocked his training table that way, and it didn’t take long for King to discover why. King’s tryout with the Invaders lasted less than a week, which ended with King lying in a hospital bed at San Francisco General.

“My liver almost burst,” King says. “I barely could eat, I had so much liver damage. They kept me there under observation for a week, and after that, I had to go back for treatment for months.”

A year later, in 1984, King was out of football. His career ended, in anonymity, as an offensive lineman with the semi-pro Orange County Rhinos, a far cry from his days as “King Pin” at Cal State Fullerton, where he earned all-conference honors for the tractor-sized holes he opened for 1978 NCAA rushing leader Obie Graves.

At 27, King was done with the football, but the drugs were just kicking in. King’s cocaine habit followed him through four years as an assembly-line worker at Hughes Aircraft, through post-layoff unemployment, leading to his arrest and conviction for commercial burglary in 1992.

King says he supported his $700-$800-a-week habit by selling stolen televisions and computers. “I had a friend who was a dispatcher for a freight company,” King says. “He’d tell me when a truck was coming in and what different items were on it. I lifted what I wanted and sold them on my own.”

It was then that King found a way to break his addiction.

Fifteen months in Soledad State Prison will do that for a man, King says.

“I’ve been clean for 19 months now,” King says. “The longest I’ve ever gone without a drink, a cigarette, smoking pot, whatever, since I was in college.”

King was released from prison in December, but his life remains just as regimented. Up at 5:30 every morning. Pray from 6 to 7. Eat breakfast from 7 to 7:30. Tend to chores after that.

King now serves as a work counselor for Home Free Ministries in Placentia, a recovery program for ex-drug offenders, ex-convicts and homeless men and women run by Pastor Vicente Esquivel of the Placentia Free Methodist Church.

Esquivel operates three recovery homes that currently house 37 men and nine women who, as King words it, “are not looking for a handout, but a hand up. We feed them, clothe them, give them a structured environment, help them get back on their feet.”

The homes are supported solely by donations, Esquivel says--whatever can be raised by weekly car washes and the one-day work programs King helps organize with Home Free members.

“We call them ‘Soldiers,’ ” King says. “We go out in twos, sometimes in groups of four or six, and do whatever day jobs we can find. Like (Thursday), we did some work helping an electrician and helped another guy move in Irvine. We don’t set a fee, we just do the work and take donations.”

Life at Home Free is a Spartan existence, because the modest donations get spread fairly thin. “The Saturday car washes pay for the lights,” King says. “And we eat beans and rice every day. A lot of beans and rice. Whenever we get a little meat in there, we’re real happy.”

Yet, King calls Home Free one of the best experiences of his life.

“For me, it’s been a real blessing,” he says. “Who knows? Maybe without it, I’d be back on the street, back to that same old cycle.”

And he knows where that cycle leads. King talks about one former Fullerton teammate who was shot to death in a drug deal a few years ago. He sees others, “Guys I played ball with, digging in trash cans now. Guys who got their degrees. You can see them now behind the Alpha Beta in Fullerton, digging through the trash.”

King looks forward to the day when he can move back to his real home and repair his marriage. King and his wife, Benita, are separated, but Esquivel currently is counseling the couple. “She wants to make sure he’s changed before they get back together,” Esquivel says. “Leonard’s doing good. Maybe another six months and then he goes home.”

In the meantime, King gets out for a few hours every day, seeing that the work gets done, the word is spread and money is raised. (Donations and day jobs can be arranged by calling Home Free at (714) 579-7647 or (714) 632-3571.)

“The homes have a success rate of 75 to 80%,” King says. “Of those who stick with the program, 75 to 80% go back to their families, get jobs and never relapse.”

Finally, that’s one cut King believes he can make.