Jockey’s Hardship Followed by Tragedy

John Suarez had simply disappeared.

A struggling jockey trying to stay financially afloat as an exercise rider, Suarez had left messages on his former wife’s answering machine at Christmas, but that was the last she had heard from him.

One of Suarez’s brothers, Jose, who lives near San Diego, had lost touch around Thanksgiving.

Suarez hadn’t seen his lawyer since November.

Suarez’s car, parked illegally at Hollywood Park, had been towed and impounded.

Friends at the track hadn’t seen him in two months.

“He was in my office before Thanksgiving,” said his attorney, Joseph Lisoni. “He was going over his career, showing me all his racing licenses, reviewing everything that had happened. I didn’t realize it then, but I guess he was saying goodbye.”

Suarez, wearing only long underwear, his jacket with identification nearby, was found hanging from a tree, a noose around his neck, last Thursday in a remote area near the training track at Hollywood Park. He apparently had committed suicide.

The body of the 48-year-old man was badly decomposed. The smell had been noticed by track employees, but they thought it could have been coming from a dead animal.

“He could have been dead for four to six weeks,” said Russ Enyeart, a detective with the Inglewood Police Department.

After leaving his native Dominican Republic in the early 1970s, Suarez rode at several East Coast tracks. He came to California four years ago, taking out licenses as both an exercise rider and a jockey, but he seldom rode in races. A meeting in 1998 at Hollywood Park was typical: He rode in only 10 races, with no wins and two second-place finishes.

In the last year, his ability to gallop horses during morning training hours was compromised by a broken collarbone and knee injury. Backstretch employees at Hollywood Park told police that Suarez could be seen jogging, trying to get fit again.

Jose Suarez said that the two Christmas-time messages his brother had left with his former wife were upbeat. Jose Suarez said that he once came to Inglewood to pay his brother’s bill at a cheap motel near the track. John Suarez, his brother said, was depressed because all of the workman’s compensation money from the two accidents hadn’t come through.

“He got some of it, a little at a time,” Jose Suarez said. “But he never got it all. He would have still been here if he had gotten all the money.”

Lisoni, who handled the two claims, said that the first case was settled in November.

“The second case was working its way through the system,” Lisoni said. “It was for an amount of $7,000 or $8,000. None of that money had come in. I loaned him $1,000 the last time I saw him. He was a personal friend, a nice man and we were close. But he had financial difficulties.

“You know how it is at the track; you get hurt and nobody wants to take a chance on using you with their horses. It’s a tragedy that this happened.”

Twice-divorced, John Suarez was born in Santo Domingo, one of 10 children. Among his survivors are five daughters, two in Florida, two in Boston and one in the Dominican Republic. His parents live in the Bronx, N.Y. He had one grandson.

“He was not always easy to get along with,” Jose Suarez said. “But on a horse he was good. He started riding back home, when he was 16. He knew about horses.”