Driven by Life’s Passions

Chris Rawlings was 3 1/2 when he started to ride a bike without training wheels. He was driven to, his mother explained, because his older brother could.

At 7, he began to take an interest in architecture and automobiles. “He’d point to an older building and say, ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ ” his mother, Suzanne, recalled in a recent interview. “Or he’d sit for hours and draw pictures of race cars with his grandpa. It was their dream to design one together.”

These two qualities--his competitive nature and taste for fine things--would remain powerful motivators in Rawlings’ life. Indeed, in one way or another, they likely led to his death.

Rawlings, 30, was killed last month after he was ejected from the trunk of his Bentley automobile during a fiery crash that occurred as his kidnappers attempted to elude police.

Days later, it was disclosed that Rawlings was suspected by the FBI of running a multimillion-dollar telemarketing scam before he was killed. Los Angeles police homicide detectives are investigating whether Rawlings’ business practices may have given someone a motive for murder. But they are “leaning heavily” toward the alternative theory that his gleaming white Bentley or diamond-encrusted Rolex watch attracted some follow-home robbers.

Although never charged with a crime, Rawlings is portrayed in federal court papers as a silver-tongued confidence man who urged underlings at his telemarketing operation to “get straight to the money,” when dealing with clients, or “mooches,” as they were known.

Ruthless, some have called him. Obsessed with cash, say others. A con man.

Until now, Rawlings’ family has been silent on his slaying, deep in grief over the loss of the son, husband and father of three. His father, Stephen, remains in denial, unable to talk about his son’s death, even with his wife.

But in an interview with The Times, Rawlings’ mother and wife, Barbie, described a loving, committed father whose only obsession was with his family, and whose kind acts and inspiration over the years have resulted in hundreds of condolence letters, one from a man who spent but a few weeks with Rawlings in Marine boot camp.

Suzanne and Barbie Rawlings conceded that Chris seldom talked about his work, but that they did not believe he would knowingly break the law. Even if the worst were true, they said, he did not deserve to die.

Barbie Rawlings, 26, Chris’ wife of five years, laughed at the notion that Chris was some kind of big spender or “player.”

His life revolved around home, she said, where he wore blue jeans and T-shirts, not silks suits. He would play with his daughters for a couple of hours every evening before their bedtime. Sometimes the game was “hairdresser,” in which daddy was the customer and his face was smeared with makeup and barrettes were placed his hair.

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On weekends, he made pancake breakfasts for the family, a tradition passed down from his own father. Entertainment most often consisted of a trip to Blockbuster, where Disney movies were among his favorites. He seldom drank anything harder than Coca-Cola, and was an avid reader of history and philosophy.

Her husband did have a fascination with fancy cars, Barbie Rawlings said. One that she did not share.

Without notice, she said, he would pull up in the driveway with one expensive car or another, most recently the Bentley.

“He would come home and--beep. I’d come out there and I’d be like, ‘Oh.’ And he would explain to me and show me all the details of things and stand behind the car and say, ‘Just look how it curves,’ and stuff like that.”

Barbie said she found herself at a loss for words at such moments.

“I’d be like, ‘Oh, OK . . . well, the kids want to go to Chuck E. Cheese.’

“The car and everything--it was something he appreciated and he liked to be around, but it wasn’t him. People on the outside who don’t really know him would think that’s what he’s all about. That’s not even 10% of what he was about,” she said. “We were really simple people.”

With her parents both working for the Cupid’s Hot Dogs chain, Barbie Rawlings said she was raised in a middle-class home in Granada Hills, and had never been around money. When she met Chris in 1994 at the now-defunct Pelican’s Retreat restaurant in Calabasas, she was driving an old Volkswagen bus that had to be parked on a hill so it would roll down and jump start the engine because the starter was broken. She still shops at Target, she said.

She saw her husband not in terms of his financial success, she said, but in the way he treated people.

For example, when door-to-door salespeople would come to their home, she said Chris would invariably invite them into the house.

“He sat them down at the table, gave them a Coca-Cola, listened to what they had to say, and then just applauded them,” she said. “He was so proud [of them]. He was like, ‘As long as you keep trying, you’re going do it. You’re going in the right direction. Don’t ever feel bad because you’re going door-to-door. At least you’re off the streets. At least you’re doing something.’ ”

She also remembers waiting in the Bentley outside a convenience store as Chris would stop to give a homeless person a hot dog and a pep talk.

“He always saw the best in everybody,” his wife said, choking back tears. “He gave everybody a chance.”

Barbie Rawlings said she was devastated by the fraud allegations in the wake of her husband’s death. His work life was a mystery, she said.

“I would ask him, ‘Honey, I don’t even know what you do for a living. I know you leave this house and you come back, but I don’t know what you do.’ And he would be like, ‘Hon, don’t worry about it. That’s my job. Your job is the house and the kids.’ ”

At times, she said, she would ask how they could afford all the fancy clothes and jewelry and the lease on the Bentley and rent on a big house with a pool in Woodland Hills, but her husband always reassured her.

“I’d ask him, ‘Honey, can we afford this?’ And he’d be like, ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it.’ ”

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Christopher Lynn Rawlings was born Feb. 7, 1969 in Davenport, Iowa. He was in preschool when his parents, two brothers and a sister moved to Southern California.

“He was always a really happy, determined, competitive child,” said his mother, Suzanne. “He had a real sense of fair play. We always thought he would become an attorney and then a judge.”

Chris went to elementary school at Viewpoint in Calabasas. He attended Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, where his determination and competitive spirit compensated for his comparatively small 5-foot, 8-inch frame, said his football coach, Bill Redell.

“Chris wasn’t very big, but he was one of the harder workers on the team,” Redell said. “He had very good football character. He wanted to do well.”

In 1986, Rawlings made a key pass reception in a playoff game that helped Crespi win and go on to capture the divisional championship.

After graduation a year later, Chris attended San Diego State University for a year. He then returned home and enrolled in Valley College for a year, before transferring to UC Berkeley.

“Then he surprised me with a 3 1/2-page letter one day that he had joined the Marine Corps,” his mother recalled. “It had a lot to do with determination, discipline. Maybe he was becoming bored. Christopher had that type of mind and body that he’d always push himself.”

After boot camp, Rawlings was stationed with the Marines in Okinawa, Japan, where he met Ayana Hodges. The two dated on and off for about two years in the early ‘90s, said Hodges, who now lives near San Diego.

“Chris was very friendly. He got along with everybody. He was good looking. Very confident,” she recalled. “He had that baby face, that type of face a mother would love for her daughter to bring home.”

She said Chris frequently spoke of leaving the service and going into business for himself.

“All I knew is that he wanted to make money,” she said.

Back in the States, Hodges said she visited Chris in 1993 in the San Fernando Valley, where he was living with two or three other men. Back then, he wore fashionable baggy-style jeans and T-shirts, but he drove a pricey Acura Integra, she said.

“He used to sell some type of insurance, or accounting or something,” she said. “He really enjoyed that because he was making the money he wanted to.”

Rawlings’ mother said after the Marines, Chris used the electronics training he received to land a job with a Valley company and later went to work for a computer company in Newbury Park.

How he got involved with the telemarketing companies now under federal investigation is unclear. Suzanne Rawlings said she had met Peter Aro and Scott Courtney--the two men who prosecutors say ran the companies with Rawlings--but does not know how her son came to know them. They were not friends from school or the Marines, she said.

Aro and six other men were indicted last week in connection with the alleged telemarketing scheme, which a prosecutor said bilked $19 million from unsuspecting investors, many of them elderly. Courtney is awaiting trial in an earlier related case.

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According to court documents, Rawlings, Aro and Courtney ran four allegedly fraudulent firms, based in and around the San Fernando Valley.

One company, WRI Holdings, allegedly tricked people into investing in a deal to release recordings by Marvin Gaye and the Beatles. Company officials allegedly neglected to tell investors that 80% of the money would somehow end up in the pockets of the telemarketing firm. Prosecutors said there were similar scams involving cosmetics, movies and even public utilities.

Rawlings’ mother and his wife said if Chris knew he was under investigation before he died, he showed no sign of it.

“The type of person he was, he wouldn’t share that,” Suzanne said.

Rawlings died Feb. 10, two days after he was apparently followed home from a trip to the grocery store to buy diapers and to pick up dinner from Fat Burger on Ventura Boulevard.

Barbie said she heard his car pull into the garage. After a minute, when he didn’t come into the house, she walked out to the garage where she saw two masked men beating her husband. She shut the door to the garage, grabbed a cell phone and ran upstairs with her daughters. They crawled out through a window and Barbie closed it behind them. Laying on the roof to conceal herself, Barbie called 911.

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The robbers ransacked the downstairs portion of the house, escaping with some valuables. They overpowered Rawlings and threw him in the trunk. Just as police arrived, the Bentley rolled out of the garage and police gave chase. In the high-speed pursuit, the car crashed into a light pole on Tampa Avenue near the Ventura Freeway.

Both kidnappers, described as African American males in their 20s with short, cropped hair, escaped and remain at large. Police suspect the men may be responsible for at least one other recent follow-home robbery nearby.

By the time Rawlings was admitted to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, he had slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. In addition to massive head injuries, his hands were cut and bruised, his knuckles swollen.

Detectives declined to comment on the injuries, but his mother took the injuries to his hand as a sign that her son fought hard to protect his family.

“He gave his life to keep them from getting inside that house,” she said. “That’s how he was.”

As it became increasingly clear that Chris would not live, and friends and family members wept at his bedside saying their goodbyes, his mother stood at the end of the bed, rubbing his feet.

She thought about how when he was just 9 months old he was up and running, chasing his older brother and sister around the house, and of his speed on the football field and on the track team in high school.

“I kept rubbing his feet,” Suzanne Rawlings recalled, her voice quaking. “I said, ‘Your feet were always so fast. Now they’ve taken you to God too fast for me.’ ”