After Paying His Dues, He Belongs in Driver’s Seat

Oza James Waddell could have been angry and bitter when he was shot in the back at age 18. He was left a paraplegic, without the football career he had been planning.

Waddell could still be bitter and angry over the last 16 years, fighting against prejudices and preconceptions over both his race--he is African American--and his disability as he aimed to become a harness racing driver.

But with the new harness racing season underway at Los Alamitos, here is Waddell, 36 now and sitting in his wheelchair, proud possessor of a harness driving license and a stable of five horses. He hopes they will bring him wins and respect and then better horses, and more wins and more respect and . . . well, you get the idea.

Sometimes it is hard not to be disillusioned about so many athletes who seem to have forgotten about their love of sport, replacing it with greed and a sense of entitlement. Respect me. Pay me. And the team owners aren’t any better.

Then you meet someone like Oza James Waddell.

The son of Jim and Jean Waddell, an X-ray technician and nurse, respectively, Waddell grew up on a little ranch near Rialto. There were always horses on the Waddell property--and football.

Jim Waddell had been a star running back for Compton Community College and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. Waddell’s younger brother, Jerome, played football at Oregon State.

And Waddell himself was a star wide receiver at Fontana High who had moved on to Mt. San Jacinto Junior College, with every intention of moving on to Division I and then to the NFL. At 6 feet 4, he was also a talented track athlete with Olympic aspirations.

And then one night in 1979, Waddell went to a college party. Some obnoxious guys tried to crash it. They were turned away. They came back and fired a gun. Waddell was shot in the back and it was his father, the X-ray technician, who looked at Waddell’s X-ray, turned to his older son and said, “You aren’t going to be playing football any more. You are going to be in a wheelchair.”

It was also Jim, the strong and purposeful father, who saw his son in the wheelchair one day a few months later at rehab and said, “You know, son, the way you sit in that wheelchair, that’s the way a harness driver sits in a sulky. You get strong enough, maybe you can drive.”

That single statement gave the son his hope back. He had had a harness driver’s license since he was 16 so that he could help with the horses on the ranch. Now that license became his lifeline. Instead of leaving rehab on the weekends to visit at home, Waddell would stay at the rehab center because there was a janitor who would unlock the gym and let Waddell work out.

After a couple of years of hard work, Waddell got into a sulky one afternoon for a race trial at Los Alamitos. It was 1982. He had kept up that license by paying his dues but without telling any racing official that he was paralyzed. Waddell drove his horse to third place in the trial--an uneventful drive--and was sure he had found his new life.

Until the next day. At about 6 a.m., as Waddell remembers, he was called into the stewards’ office and told his license was revoked. He was told it was unsafe for him to be driving. Unsafe for other drivers. And Waddell was dismissed.

He was dismissed but not dissuaded. And for the last 16 years, he has been training trotters, yes, but also training himself and training the system. Waddell has made appeal after appeal after appeal. He has taken driving tests, been failed for reasons he did not believe were valid, then taken the test again.

“There are only two other black drivers and trainers in the state and I think I fought a little against my race,” Waddell says. “And there are no other paralyzed drivers in the country. So I fought against that. But I’m not angry. Not at all. I’m just thankful I’ve finally done it.”

Finally, last month, Waddell took another driver’s test. He passed.

On Jan. 3, Waddell is sending his horses to Los Alamitos. Within a week, he hopes to drive in his first race.

“That will be such a great day,” Waddell says. “It will be the greatest day. I always dreamed of being a professional athlete and on that day I will be one.”

He has the support of two of the top harness drivers in the country, Rick Plano and Rick Kuebler. And he has a letter from Dr. Vincent J. Devlin of Kaiser Permanente which says, in part, “The above patient exhibits unusual mobility for a person with his type of paraplegia.”

Last summer, Waddell followed closely the saga of Casey Martin. He rooted for the golfer with a congenital leg defect in Martin’s legal battle to use a cart. He cheered when Martin won. He paid attention to the endorsements that Martin was receiving. But then Waddell noticed something else.

“He didn’t play that well,” Waddell says. “Where is he now? So I got to get out there and win some. I got to do well. It’s not over yet.”

When you feel as if there is no one worth cheering for any more, head over to Los Alamitos. Give a hand to Oza James Waddell. You will feel good.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.