‘84 Olympian Is Still a Winner

I saw Sugar Ray Robinson box only toward the end of his career, but even as a tiny black figure on a gray television screen, he made a vivid impression. And the current star of Los Angeles’ boxing scene, Oscar de la Hoya, seems as impressive outside the ring--he’s smart and articulate--as he is inside it.

But no boxer I ever saw made a brutish and bloody sport seem more exquisitely poetic than Paul Gonzales, the wiry kid who came out of the East Los Angeles barrio to win a gold medal in the light-flyweight (106 pounds) division during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He had smooth, quick moves that were more akin to dancing than fighting. I watched him win several matches more by avoiding his opponent than by beating him into submission. Whoever coined the cliche about boxing being “the sweet science” surely had a fighter like Gonzales in mind.

Gonzales’ was a story that seemed scripted in Hollywood. A poor boy, slight of build, raised in a public housing project by a single mother, he was a candidate for trouble. Indeed, he was wounded in a gang shooting before being saved from the streets by a cop named Al Stankie. Impressed by the boy’s spunk, Stankie took Gonzales to an Eastside gym and taught him how to box. And Gonzales went on to become the first Mexican American to win an Olympic gold medal.

Unfortunately, Gonzales’ story didn’t end there, as it would have in the movie that at least one producer considered making about “The Cop and the Kid.”

Injuries cut Gonzales’ boxing career short. Two years ago, 10 years from the August day on which he won his gold medal, he retired from the ring at the age of 30. He had a winning record and a couple of minor pro championships to his name. But in the minds of many people, Paul Gonzales, Olympic hero, was relegated to the dreaded category of “what might have been.”

In a way, Gonzales’ story could symbolize the experience many of us in Los Angeles had with the ’84 Olympics.

As anyone who lived here at the time can attest, the two weeks of the Games were truly remarkable. Just reading and watching the breathless news coverage of the final days leading up to the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta brings back vague but pleasant memories of the communal sense of excitement to be found here 12 years ago.

“L.A.’s the Place,” we proclaimed. And a sprawling region as notorious for its lack of civic consciousness as it is for the lack of a geographic center pulled itself together to throw a party for the rest of the world. The freeways flowed smoothly, the summer heat was milder than normal and the smog seemed to disappear.

We even coined a local cliche during the Olympics: world class. Somehow, the way we handled the ’84 Games was forevermore to be cited as proof that everything from our museums to our car washes are “world class,” or should at least aspire to that status.

Then the Olympics ended and real life, as it usually does, intervened.

Sooner than most of us wanted, we were reminded that Los Angeles has world class problems, too. And not just the obvious, like riots and earthquakes. In many ways, the effects of the more gradual changes that began as this region’s defense-based economy faced the end of the Cold War were more widespread and painful than the physical jolts Los Angeles sustained.

But, like a world class city is supposed to, we bounced back.

Our economy is now focused on sectors that were always important, but sometimes taken for granted, especially the Three Ts: trade, tourism and technology. And even Paul Gonzales is not nearly so washed up as conventional wisdom would have it.

The last time I saw him, he seemed healthy and happy. He does motivational speaking, helps programs to keep young people off drugs, and still works out occasionally at the Hollenbeck Youth Center, the gym supported by Los Angeles police officers where Al Stankie first took him. The kids who hang out there still ask for his autograph and consider him a hero.

So do I. After all, given what seemed possible after 1984, it takes at least a little gumption to just carry on with life despite its inevitable disappointments.

I wanted to interview Paul for this column, but couldn’t track him down. He’s somewhere in Atlanta, no doubt enjoying the accolades former medal winners receive when they show up at subsequent Olympics. And no doubt reliving many a fond memory of 1984. He’s surely earned the right.

But so, in a way, have all of us who have faced, and overcome, the challenges of everyday life in Los Angeles since 1984.