His Worst Night Was His Girlfriend’s Last

It has been more than two years now, since Eliel Swinton’s worst nightmare exploded into life, casting him into a world of pain, loneliness and despair.

On Saturday in Palo Alto, Stanford’s strong safety will pull on his Cardinal jersey, and play another football game, this one against USC. There will be hard hits, shouts of battle and he will experience again the sheer joy of the game he calls “my drug of choice.”

But at some point during the game--it happens every game--his thoughts will drift back to the awful night of Oct. 20, 1994, when he learned that the worst thing that could happen had happened.

He learned in a hospital lobby that night that Jessica Williams, his girlfriend, was dead.

He has learned that talking about it can heal his spirit, and so he spoke of it in an interview this week. He talked about it all--the final kiss, the stolen spoon, her letters, a different kind of love . . . and of Catherine, the new woman in his life.

“I was playing Sega in my dorm room at about 10 p.m. with a teammate, Leroy Pruitt, when I got the call,” he said.

“It was from Augie, a mutual friend of Jessica’s and mine. He said to me, ‘Hey, the girls have been in an accident, on the freeway someplace.’

“I asked about Jessica and he said he didn’t know anything else. Suddenly I couldn’t talk and tears were running down my face. I had a real bad feeling about it.

“Leroy drove me across the Bay Bridge and we found the hospital--to this day I don’t know what city it was--and I ran into the lobby. Jessica’s friend, Krishell, was there and I yelled at her, ‘Where’s Jessica?’

“She looked at me before answering and then said, ‘Come here, Eliel, I have to talk to you.’

“At that point, I basically knew. Right there, I lost my mind. It was like my world dropped away, from under me. I felt like I was seeing myself through Krishell’s eyes, or through a camera lens.

“That’s how I remember that night. I see my face through someone else’s eyes. I collapsed, on the floor, then I jumped up and punched a steel door and broke my hand.”

He was sucked into a whirlpool of agony: the funeral, a week at home with his family and Jessica’s. Perhaps hardest of all was returning to Stanford, trying feebly to see his football life as important again.

Only this year, Stanford coaches say, has Swinton become whole again. Football, he says, has saved him.

“Football is everything to me now, like before,” he said. “I love winning more than anyone, but also the camaraderie . . . the love you get back from teammates and coaches.”

A 5-foot-11, 200-pound senior, Swinton came to Stanford from West Hills. He was a widely recruited running back at Montclair Prep in Van Nuys. Jessica, who went to Banning High, was from Carson.

“We met in the spring of ‘93, at a weekend for incoming Stanford black freshmen,” he said.

“There was a dance, and I asked her to dance. That night, we walked all over Stanford until 4 a.m., just talking. I asked her to go to my high school prom, and she said yes.

“I saw her all that summer. When we came to Stanford, she came to all the games. After every game, I could count on her being right outside the locker room, waiting for me. That was one of the hard parts after I came back, knowing she wouldn’t be there anymore, waiting.”

He recalls the final kiss.

“She was in my dorm room and we were playing Sega,” he said.

“She told me she was going over to the East Bay with her girlfriends, who wanted to visit some guys. I said fine, then she left. Then she knocked on my window. I opened it, and she said, ‘How come you didn’t kiss me goodbye?’

“I said I was sorry, and we kissed. Then she said, ‘I love you. I’ll talk to you later.’ ”

He has put together an album--photos, letters, the stolen spoon and the final phone message.

“She was in Mexico once, and I was in San Diego, eating at a Chinese restaurant with my teammate, Mike Mitchell,” he said.

“It was my birthday, and she’d promised she’d call. The call never came. And I got angry. I was so upset I felt a need to do something wrong. So when we left the restaurant, I picked up a spoon and put it in my pocket.

“Later, she explained she couldn’t get a call out of Mexico. And I showed her the spoon, and how she’d driven me to do something wrong.

“The spoon became a kind of symbol to us, of how much I loved her.”

In death, Jessica became part of him, he said.

“The most frustrating part of it was my seeing her all the time, in front of me, and not being able to just reach out and grab her. I had all these pictures and memories . . .

“But she wasn’t tangible. She became part of me. She was now my thoughts, words and dreams.”

But the healing has begun. Swinton has a new girlfriend, freshman Catherine Fox, who won two swimming gold medals on relay teams at the Atlanta Olympics.

“Catherine’s cool,” Swinton reports.

“She’s down to earth, always has a smile on her face. But the best part about her is she understands everything about Jessica.

“She knows not a day goes by when I don’t think about her. And she knows I still love Jessica, but that it’s not the same kind of love. And she knows that might go on for a long time. I told her I would never compare her to Jessica.”

In the accident, Jessica and a friend, Nicole Hicks, were the only passengers among eight not wearing seat belts. Jessica was thrown from the van and died instantly. Hicks had critical head injuries, but survived.

“I’m a seat belt nag now,” Swinton said.

“Jessica died because she wasn’t wearing one. Every time Catherine forgets her seat belt, I get upset, and she understands.”