Bodybuilding Became Deputy’s Weakness

Timothy Sladeck has always kept himself in shape, from his days playing football at Whittier’s California High School to running regularly to stay fit for his job as a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

But sometime over the past five years, Sladeck’s interest in fitness evolved into an obsession, according to his friends and family.

The 28-year-old Foothill Ranch man--who now sits in Orange County Jail charged with robbing a jewelry story and possession of illegal steroids--began spending most of his free time in the gym and most of his spare money striving for a dream: to make it as a professional bodybuilder.

He mortgaged his hoped-for career, selling off percentages to investors to help finance his training, finally going broke, his brother said.

“It consumed his life,” said the brother, James Sladeck, a Newport Beach financial planner who also lives in Foothill Ranch. “He was [working out] two or three times a day. It’s like another job, six to eight hours a day.

“He had no balance to his life, with his family, with his fiancee, with his friends. It was maybe 20% work, 70% bodybuilding and 10% for everything else in life.”

As Sladeck’s dream failed to materialize, he racked up “monstrous” debts, the brother said. Early last year, he filed for voluntary personal bankruptcy.

Sladeck’s troubles intensified last month, when Orange County authorities charged the law-enforcement officer with robbing a Lake Forest jewelry store and with possession of steroids found at his house. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. Neither Sladeck nor his attorney would discuss the case with a Times reporter.

The robbery took place just before closing time on Jan. 8, when a man wearing a brand-new black cowboy hat, jeans, and a blue blazer over a gray sweater strolled into the Jewel Garden shop on El Toro Road, according to police records filed in South County Municipal Court. As a clerk showed him some loose diamonds and tennis bracelets, the records say, the man raised the front of his shirt to flash a handgun stuck in his waistband and told her, “Give me the box or I’ll f------ shoot you.”

The robber got the jewelry, about $117,000 worth. But in his haste to get away, he left his new cowboy hat behind.

It took police less than 24 hours to trace the hat back to Sladeck’s roommate and fellow bodybuilder, Gabriel Tull, 27, who, according to the police records, bought the hat for Sladeck. Tull also was charged with robbery and illegal possession of steroids, but the records are unclear about Tull’s alleged role in the robbery. He also pleaded not guilty, and his attorney has said in court that Tull simply bought the hat for his roommate to go out dancing, and at Sladeck’s request.

The police reports identify Sladeck as the man with the gun.

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According to his brother, Sladeck’s obsessive pursuit of bodybuilding was sparked by a chance comment by an inmate whom Sladeck encountered in his job as a Los Angeles County bailiff.

“Ironically, an inmate was the one that told him he had the right sort of physique,” said the brother, who remains Sladeck’s steadfast defender despite the surprise deputies would later find in his own garage.

Sladeck quickly moved from mere curiosity about bodybuilding to all-consuming pursuit, his brother said. According to the owner of World Gym on El Toro Road--a few doors from the jewelry store that he’s accused of robbing--Sladeck rarely missed a day of working out.

At the gym, Sladeck picked up a reputation as a nice but occasionally arrogant guy pursuing a dream.

“He was always a friendly guy,” said Daniel Campbell, the gym’s owner and a judge in bodybuilding contests. “He’s very opinionated. . . . He was just a wannabe professional bodybuilder.”

Campbell said Sladeck had competed in local and state amateur bodybuilding contests, and had talked around the gym about hoping to enter the 1997 California championship and trying for Mr. USA or the national championship in 1998.

Reaching that level of competition can be an expensive pursuit, costing $10,000 or more a year in special diets, entry fees and training. The lucky few win sponsorships; for most, the payoff is an occasional trophy.

“It’s just mainly recognition,” said Dave Norman Jr., a former Rancho Santa Margarita bodybuilder.

“You can make some fairly decent money doing guest appearances and seminars, that sort of stuff,” said Norman, who dropped his own quest for a bodybuilding career after realizing, “I was going to have to sacrifice my whole life if I wanted go any further in the sport.”

Norman said he knows Tull and Sladeck as “gym acquaintances” and “nice, quiet kind of guys.” He described Sladeck as seemingly driven by his desire to make it as a professional bodybuilder.

“He was pretty much obsessed with bodybuilding and thinking he was eventually going to [reach] the professional level,” Norman said. “Some guys are like that. They just get so obsessed with success they don’t ever want to give it up. They’ve got to have it in their lives.”

Norman said the arrest surprised him.

“He never really struck me as somebody who would do something that crazy,” Norman said.

Campbell, who has been involved with bodybuilding for about 20 years, said he has seen others similarly consumed by the sport, which can be a financial drain.

“Some people become so obsessed with the way they look that it becomes a lifelong pursuit,” Campbell said. “For a big guy like 250 pounds, it’s expensive enough to eat and he can consume up to 5,000 to 7,000 calories a day, a lot of meat and 10 chicken breasts a day. You’ve got to be very focused and spend money in the right places. Some guys get into the drugs to bulk up, and who knows how that can cost.”

Sladeck did have some successes. He took first place in Mr. Laguna Beach and Mr. Huntington Beach competitions a few years back, and in 1995 placed second in the Tournament of Champions in Redondo Beach, his brother said.

But he wasn’t making it into bodybuilding’s big leagues.

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James and Timothy Sladeck grew up a year and a half apart in Whittier, and for the six months before the arrest lived a couple of blocks apart in Foothill Ranch. They’re close, as brothers go, sharing an enthusiasm for water sports, although over the past few months they have seen less and less of each other, the brother said.

Timothy Sladeck commuted to downtown Los Angeles for his job as a bailiff. When he started eight years ago, he was a civilian employee and it was just a job, a way to pay the bills, the brother said. But Sladeck took to the work quickly and a year later joined the Sheriff’s Department as a career step.

The brother said Sladeck initially “was pretty gung-ho” with his law-enforcement job. “He wanted to be on the SWAT team,” he said.

Sladeck was transferred to the Metropolitan branch courthouse about a year ago. A co-worker who declined to be identified said Sladeck “did a pretty good job while he was here,” but kept distinct separations between work and his private life.

“Nobody really palled around with him,” the co-worker said. “He had his own crowd with the bodybuilding and pretty much stuck with them.”

But the bodybuilding was costing Sladeck more than friends, according to his brother and ex-fiancee.

In order to finance his obsession, Sladeck had talked investors into loaning him money in exchange for a percentage in his bodybuilding career when he turned pro. If he didn’t break into the professional circuit, his brother said, the agreement was that Sladeck would pay back the money.

The five-year period was up, his brother said, and his brother owed enormous debts.

“His car was getting repossessed. He had lost his house,” the brother said.

In his January 1996 bankruptcy filing, Sladeck declared $190,982 in liabilities--including about $26,000 in unsecured loans, mostly credit cards--against $105,300 in assets, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records. The filing shows that six months earlier he had voluntarily given up his car for repossession, and was in default for payments on a rented car. And he was continuing to lose ground, going $500 deeper into debt every month trying make ends meet on his monthly take-home pay of about $2,500, according to the bankruptcy records.

According to records in the Orange County recorder’s office, Sladeck’s Aliso Viejo condominium was sold to a bank in a foreclosure sale in April 1996 after he had fallen more than $7,000 behind in payments as of September 1995. He also was found in default in November 1995 on the local association fees totaling $600, including attorney fees and penalties.

According to former bodybuilder Norman, Sladeck’s ambition was a longshot.

“He was nothing as far as stature in the bodybuilding world,” Norman said. “He was just a guy who worked out and did a few shows. He was nowhere near professional level.

“He just didn’t have the potential, the genetic physique. I didn’t think he was ever going to get to that level.”

About six months ago, Sladeck moved in with Tull when his fiancee left him after 2 1/2 years of living together. The problem, she said, was that she could no longer handle what his preoccupation with bodybuilding was doing to his life, and to their relationship.

“It was an obsession--it was his life,” said the ex-fiancee, who asked not to be identified by name. “He put that first, before everything else--before me, even. It was controlling his life, his whole financial situation.

“It just took over his whole life.”

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After Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested Sladeck, his brother went to visit him in jail. At first, the brother waved off Sladeck’s apologies for having gotten him involved.

“Then he let it come out,” the brother said. “He told me he hid the jewelry in my garage.”

When he returned home that day, the brother avoided his garage and contacted investigators, who came out and retrieved a box from the garage. About half of the jewels reported stolen were there, according to court records. Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Fell, who is prosecuting the case, declined comment on where the rest of the jewels might have gone. The brother said he doesn’t know.

Police confirm James Sladeck’s account. Police affidavits filed in the case describe how he contacted authorities about the jewels and told them that his accused brother had told him where they were.

Since his arrest, Timothy Sladeck has given police a statement, which South Orange County Municipal Court Judge Pamela L. Iles ordered sealed at the request of Sladeck’s public defender and over the objections of The Times. But Ed Eisler, Tull’s public defender, detailed some of the statement’s contents during a hearing in which Tull’s bail was reduced from $250,000 to $50,000. Tull was released on bond Feb. 7.

Eisler said in court that Sladeck told police that on the day of the robbery he asked Tull to buy him a cowboy hat because he was going dancing that night. Tull was arrested the day after the robbery as he and a companion tried to buy a matching cowboy hat at the same store. Tull told investigators he bought the first hat for Sladeck, court records say.

“In Mr. Sladeck’s statement, he said [Tull] did nothing, knew nothing about the robbery,” Eisler said in court.

Yet Tull’s role remains unclear as investigators pursue explanations for a piece of paper found in Tull’s car that listed “mustache, glass, hat or cowboy hat, duct tape,” and an explanation for why Tull tried to buy another hat the day after the robbery.

James Sladeck remains concerned for his brother and is willing to help. Perhaps, he said, his brother’s arrest might have been the redeeming moment in his life.

“His life was going nowhere,” James Sladeck said. “He could easily have ended up dead himself.”

Also contributing to this story were staff writers Tina Nguyen, Thao Hua and Lee Romney.