Still in the Swim After Two Decades of Giving

It was the summer 1987. He had just turned 22. You hear stories of the shootings in South Central--the gang-banging and the drive-bys and the innocent victims. Marc Little was one.

Little, son of former Denver Bronco running back Floyd Little, walked across the street from his dorm at USC with his girlfriend, Tegra Hearns, to buy a loaf of bread. While walking back, Little saw a guy bent over the hood of a car adjusting a windshield wiper. He mumbled something about needing help.

“Fix what?” Little asked.

“Fix this,” the guy said, pointing a 12-gauge shotgun at Little’s forehead. Hearns ran. Little stood still. Life stood still.

“You’d better have at least $100,” the man said.

Little didn’t have it. He remembers thinking that he was about to die. The man struck Little in the head, not hard enough to knock him down, but Little went down anyway, thinking that maybe his assailant would leave.

Instead, Little heard him cock the gun and saw him aim it at his head. But the shot hit him in the upper right thigh. The gunman fled in the stolen Volkswagen, leaving Little in a pool of blood.

During his first week in the hospital, Little lost all but one unit of blood and developed renal failure; his weight ballooned from 140 pounds to 212, then dropped again. Doctors said that he might not live.

The shooter was an 18-year-old gang member. He was caught, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Little, a former high school sprinter, had to have his right leg amputated at the hip.

He was angry. He wanted to feel sorry for himself. But his father wouldn’t let him.

“He just stared at the ceiling and ignored me,” Floyd said. “He wanted more medication, I told them to cut it off. I wasn’t going to deal with an addict. . . . But I told him no matter what you say, how angry you get, I’m going to stay.”

Four months later, Marc realized “life was passing by” without him and went back to work. Working at the airport as a ticket agent, he declined use of a prostheses when loading luggage onto ramps.

“I wanted people to accept me for who I was,” he said.

He moved on with life. He got a law degree from USC thanks to a “Swim with Mike” grant, married Hearns and opened a private law firm in downtown Los Angeles, minutes from where he was shot.

He reflects on his time in law school, the support he had from his family, his faith and the person who was “like a big brother.

“Without Ron Orr,” he said, “I don’t know where I’d be.”

*

Orr, an associate athletic director at USC, is co-founder of the “Swim With Mike” program, an annual swim-a-thon at the university that has raised $2.8 million for newly disabled athletes since its inception in 1981.

Ask Orr why he gives so much and he’ll say the answer is easy--a friend needed help.

Ask others about Orr and they’ll say much more.

“That man is amazing,” said John Siciliano, a current scholarship recipient.

Last year, the event raised $400,000. The program, relying solely on volunteer support, has helped 38 recipients, among them 10 currently attending USC.

On Saturday, the 21st “Swim With Mike” event will take place at USC’s McDonald’s Swim Stadium.

Members of the Trojan football team, friends and volunteers will be there. So will Mike Nyeholt, a former All-American swimmer for USC.

The event is named for Nyeholt, who in 1981 was paralyzed from the chest down in a dirt-bike accident. He needed help to buy a van. So Orr, a childhood friend, came up with the idea of a fund-raiser, which raised $58,000. They used the extra money to set up a scholarship program.

Orr, who swam with Mike at USC, said his life changed after his friend’s accident. Helping others helped him refocus his life. Orr kept the event going because it kept him going.

“I didn’t think it would continue this long,” said Nyeholt, a vice president at a downtown financial planning firm. “But we wouldn’t be in our 21st year without Ron.”

Nyeholt said the program will continue to grow and help others as much as it has helped him.

“When I’m down, I think about all the good that it has brought,” he said.

Little, Nick Enriquez and Siciliano attest to that.

*

Enriquez was a gifted student and standout football and baseball player at Glendora High. He even split time at quarterback with Jonathan Smith, who went on to play for Oregon State and helped the Beavers win the Fiesta Bowl this year. In his freshman year, Enriquez played against Carson Palmer, now USC’s starting quarterback.

He would join Palmer at USC, but their paths in getting there were very different.

The summer before his junior year in high school, Enriquez suffered a spinal injury diving into the ocean at Newport Beach. He became a quadriplegic. But he didn’t become bitter. He still had many things to do with his life.

Orr read about Enriquez and made sure he would have the means to get an education to achieve those goals. A month after the accident, he visited Enriquez in the hospital. A full scholarship to USC awaited him.

Enriquez was “overwhelmed” because he didn’t believe he could afford to attend USC.

Now in his sophomore year, he uses the scholarship to pay a live-in aide and an assistant who helps him take class notes.

“[The scholarship] gives us opportunities to do something with our lives,” he said. “We’ll able to give back one day.”

*

Like many, Siciliano came to L.A to pursue an acting career. In May, the 30-year-old will play the role of Dallas in USC’s adaptation of “The Outsiders.”

For a long time, he felt like one.

He received a soccer scholarship to Point Park College in Pittsburgh. But, at 23, he was injured while riding in a vehicle that was struck by a drunk driver. Siciliano’s right leg was amputated.

This week, he will visit a 17-year-old boy who suffered a similar injury. The boy tried to commit suicide. Maybe Siciliano will sit down and tell him that life goes on.

His did. He can tell the boy that, after the accident, he returned to acting. He can tell him about writing about his pain in “Siciliano,” a play about his life. It ran for three months in New York.

He can tell him about competing in the 200-meter dash at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta. Then getting a “Swim with Mike” scholarship and an opportunity to attend USC theater school.

*

Little walks with a cane and a slight limp.

“Skiing accident?” people often ask.

He smiles. He’d love to explain it, but that would take time and these days he doesn’t have much. He’s a busy man, a prostheses is the only thing that can slow him down.

He’ll be in South Africa this weekend for the Lennox Lewis fight. His law firm represents entertainers and athletes such as boxer Shane Mosley. And every day Little makes time for a phone call with his father. They were estranged for 18 years, but the accident brought them together again.

In Denver, Floyd Little was a Bronco hero.

But even heroes need a hero.

“Marc is a lot stronger than I am,” Floyd said. “He has achieved in life more than I have. My son is my hero.”