Home-Spun Hero

Carmen Carattini was crushed when she lost her 25-year-old son, Hugo, in a motorcycle accident.

She might also have lost her sanity if she didn’t still have her Tito.

To the boxing world, he is Felix Trinidad, the International Boxing Federation welterweight champion and the man who will take on Oscar De La Hoya in Saturday’s blockbuster title fight at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center.

But on this island of 3.8 million, Trinidad is simply Tito. Saturday’s event may have spread Trinidad’s name all over the world, but he was already the favorite son of his native land, the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, where he is mentioned in the same breath with Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez, the Puerto Rican superstars in the entertainment world.

And with his heightened profile internationally, Trinidad’s name is starting to be mentioned in the same sentence with Puerto Rico’s greatest sports hero, baseball’s Roberto Clemente.

Everyone in Puerto Rico whom Trinidad has touched seems to feel a special connection with him.

Like Carattini, who was one of his teachers at the Juan Antonio Corretjer Escuela, a San Juan school.

“God gave him to me,” Carattini said. “I have lost a son, but I have the son of Puerto Rico. He is making life the best it could be for me, and perhaps other Puerto Ricans. Every man and woman in the world would want to have a student who makes sports history.”

A visitor to the Corretjer school quickly gets the idea that crime and violence are deep concerns. A sliding gate with thick bars seals the entrance to the grounds and, in front of it, stands an armed guard with a bulletproof vest.

But once inside, the mention of Trinidad brings smiles and stories. The teachers still remember how his mother, Irma, brought young Tito to school, a cloth in hand to wipe the mud off his shoes before he entered.

“He was so respectful, so responsible,” Carattini said. “He was like a raw diamond.”

And today, Trinidad seems to leave a glow wherever he goes in Puerto Rico. When a local couple ran into him last week as he was leaving a news conference in nearby Fajardo, they had the presence of mind to snap a picture of the fighter. As Trinidad kept walking, the couple stood, mouths open, faces flushed, before rushing off to tell friends and family about the moment in their lives when they met Felix Trinidad.

Such feelings have intensified, if that’s possible, as Saturday’s fight approaches. Only the foolhardy would openly proclaim their support for De La Hoya on this island. The man on the street in San Juan and throughout Puerto Rico sneers at the mention of the World Boxing Council welterweight champion, refusing to entertain the thought that the fight could even be close.

In this commonwealth, he is not even Oscar De La Hoya. He is Chicken De La Hoya. Posters, banners and even a heavy bag used by Trinidad employ the derisive term that became popular when it seemed that the match might never be made. Never mind the fact that it was Don King, Trinidad’s promoter, and Felix Sr., Trinidad’s father, who were stretching out the negotiations. Around here, it was Chicken De La Hoya.

And now that the match has been made, every other event in Puerto Rico scheduled for Saturday night is being moved, if possible.

“Nobody wants to work that night,” said Luis Santiago Arce, a local reporter. “Nobody wants to do anything else that night.”

Local politicians are trying to boost their appeal by purchasing the fight and offering it free to the poorer residents in their areas. Puerto Rico’s Department of Corrections is spending $40,000 to show the fight on big screens in four prisons.

Which four prisons? It has been left up to the inmates. The four penal institutions that are judged the best behaved leading up to the fight will get to see the event.

The others? Well, they don’t figure to be too well-behaved after learning they have lost their viewing opportunity.

The Puerto Rican media are now all-Trinidad all the time in the final days before the fight. One newspaper ran a front-page story on the man who makes Trinidad’s shoes.

King, never a man to pass up a chance to pander, has hopped on the Puerto Rican bandwagon and grabbed the reins. Everywhere he goes on this island, King yells, “Viva Puerto Rico,” while waving the flag of the commonwealth.

“Felix Trinidad is standing at the threshold of greatness,” King said. “We Puerto Ricans know how great he is. Once he steps through that doorway, the world will know.”

There is such confidence in Trinidad in Puerto Rico that a victory parade has already been planned for Sunday.

Perhaps he is so popular here because he has not only stayed close to his roots, he continues to nurture those roots.

Trinidad was raised in Cupey Alto, a San Juan suburb, on a hill first owned by his grandparents. He returns to the hill after every fight.

Where once there was one house on the property, there are now 14. While Trinidad has moved to a better part of town, living in a $300,000 house in a gated community on Monte Hiedra, he still supports the many relatives who live on the tree-lined hill in Cupey Alto near a peaceful lake.

Trinidad’s support comes not only in the form of money, but hard labor as well. He may fly to New York to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for a night’s work in the ring as Felix Trinidad, but when he returns home, he is again Tito, putting in a day’s work in Cupey Alto, sweeping the floor and cutting the grass just as he did as a young boy.

When Hurricane George swept through the area, causing widespread damage, it was Trinidad who supplied the financial assistance necessary to restore his neighborhood.

“He is the same boy he has been all the time,” said Trinidad’s uncle, Juan Gomez, who serves as caretaker of the Cupey Alto property. “The fame will never go to his head.”

His neighbors don’t treat Trinidad the same as they did when he was a boy. When he is home, they drop by in wave after wave to ask him about a life that is beyond their imagination. And he patiently answers all their questions, making them feel they have a piece of something special.

People began to feel Trinidad, 26, was something special soon after he took up boxing at the age of 12. He won five Puerto Rican amateur championships in amassing a record of 51-6. There was some concern because he knocked out only 12 opponents.

But that concern vanished when Trinidad turned pro at 17 and recorded knockouts in his first five fights.

He won the IBF title at 20 by knocking out Maurice Blocker in the second round of a 1993 fight in San Diego. Trinidad has successfully defended that title 14 times and is now 35-0 with 30 knockouts.

“People will celebrate for a month,” Gilberto Luna, a Trinidad supporter, says of a victory he expects.

Trinidad knows all too well that he is not fighting only for himself.

“I worked very hard to get where I am, to get the respect of the people, to get them to support me like they do,” he said through an interpreter. “I would never let them down. . . . I know everybody will be watching on giant screens all over the island. It gives me more motivation to win for Puerto Rico.”

But if the unthinkable were to happen, a loss to De La Hoya?

“Whatever happens to him, we will love him,” Carattini said. “He will always make us proud. The money goes, but the values last.

“I will be sorry if he loses or when he retires, but he will still be great. He put the name of Puerto Rico on the big screen.”