Spirit of Troy

When 8-year-old Troy Polamalu tugged on his Uncle Salu’s leg, when he stared into his Aunt Shelley’s eyes, when he asked, pleaded, begged, to stay here in the house on the creek with his cousins Joe, Brandon and Darren and to leave behind Santa Ana and the gangs and the drugs and the trouble that had tempted his older brother and sisters, nobody expected this.

Nobody expected the little boy to stay for good. Nobody expected Troy and his wild hair to slip into Tenmile Elementary, as unnoticed as possible considering he was Samoan in a place where, as Principal Guy Hankins says, about one in every 100 students is an ethnic minority “and most of those don’t stay very long.”

Nobody really expected Troy to obey the rules of Salu, who was a Samoan fire dancer until he met Shelley, the girl from Oregon, when Salu was dancing at Don Ho’s Hawaii hotel. Salu told Troy that all household rules had to be observed and good grades had to be earned. “Or else,” Salu says, “I told Troy he would be on a bus to Santa Ana pronto.”

And surely nobody expected that now, when Troy is the latest USC All-American, a senior strong safety, a candidate for several postseason awards, a likely high-round NFL draft pick, there would be a sandwich named after him at the Munch Box in Winston, Ore., or a poster of him in the window of nearly every diner, convenience store, school and church in this beautiful valley about 200 miles southwest of Portland.

Nobody could have imagined how Polamalu grabbed the hearts of everybody he met and didn’t let go.

“Troy had a wisdom beyond his age,” says Joe LaFountaine, principal at Douglas High. “He had an old spirit in a young body.”

This was a 10-year-old LaFountaine was describing.

“In a way it’s a shame,” LaFountaine says, “that our kids in high school now know Troy by name and for his football instead of by his spirit.”

“Troy’s legacy is not football,” says Ted Martch, coordinator of the Douglas school district’s special education program. Polamalu came to the special ed trailer out behind the woodshop nearly every day for four years. His photo -- with the mentally disabled children who never knew Troy as the sports star, as the prom king, as the honor roll student but only as the nice guy who came and played with them every day -- is on every wall.

“Troy’s legacy is far greater than that. Troy’s legacy is his kind heart,” Martch says.

Jim Anderson, the woodshop teacher who was awed by Polamalu’s talent in his class and who became Troy’s favorite teacher, says, “We had a coach here whose motto was ‘Do Right.’ Troy lived by that motto.

“When Troy was graduating, he came by and told me that if he ever signed a pro contract that he was going to build me a woodshop in his home and that I could come and live there. And I know Troy would do that.”

There are more of these tributes to Troy. They come from teachers and coaches, aunts and uncles. Polamalu’s former baseball coach and athletic director, Rod Trask, drove 70 miles after school from his new home and new school to have pizza and talk about Troy.

But first must come the story of Polamalu’s family.

His mother, Suila, tried to raise five children alone in Santa Ana after Troy’s father had left. Kaio, the oldest boy, was athletically talented but also drawn to the street life. Troy, who used to pretend he was Walter Payton and have Kaio and his uncle, Kennedy Pola, turn a hose on the dirt outside the house so Troy could pretend he was running on muddy Soldier Field, noticed as Kaio was tempted by drugs and would come home with the tattoos of gangs on his arms. He saw his sisters drop out of high school.

Who would think an 8-year-old boy would see this and understand?

“But he did,” Shelley says. “This little boy came to us and he knew what he wanted and what he didn’t want.”

When Suila brought Troy to Tenmile in 1990 it was for a two-week vacation at the creekside house where wild turkeys settle into the trees and deer walk up to the deck and salmon swim by. But instead of going home with Suila, Troy asked to stay. Troy meant forever. Suila, Shelley and Salu decided it would be until Labor Day.

But Labor Day came and Suila couldn’t come up to get him. So Shelley sent him off to school. “Troy was only going to be a guest,” Shelley says, “but after a week they told me he had to enroll or he couldn’t stay. So we enrolled him and told Suila he could stay until Christmas.”

Suila came north at Christmas, but when it was time to leave, Troy cried. “He grabbed my leg and begged me to let him stay,” says Billie Redenius, Shelley’s mother and the woman Troy calls “Grandma.”

So Troy stayed. Again. He would finish out the school year, it was agreed, and then he would go home. When school ended, Salu and Shelley packed up the boys and took the camper to Santa Ana. There were trips to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, all the tourist things. Troy went home to Suila every night. On the day Salu and Shelley were going to head home, they went to say goodbye.

“Troy was sitting on his front steps,” Shelley says, “and there were these big, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Salu and I looked at each other and said, ‘I guess he’s coming with us for good.’ ”

It was, Troy says now, a blessing. “I honor my mother for letting me go because it would be best for me,” he says, “and I honor my aunt and uncle for taking me in and giving me the home I needed.”

Officially a resident of Tenmile, Polamalu was ready to do everything.

He played every sport possible and was good at all of them. Soccer was first and though he had never played, Troy took one look at the game and the ball and began dribbling down the field, weaving in and out among the other kids. When he was in seventh grade and his older brothers were short a player for a pickup basketball game and all their other friends were unavailable, Troy received a grudging invitation. “We have to use you,” they said.

“Practically the first time he touched the ball,” Joe says, “Troy dribbled right through the middle of everybody and dunked the ball. These were high school guys. Their mouths hung open.”

Neil Fuller, Troy’s high school football coach, remembers the 130-pound rookie taking aim at a receiver who had caught the ball over the middle. “Troy absolutely laid him out,” Fuller says, “on a totally textbook, clean hit, the hardest hit we had ever seen. And the ref throws a flag. I run out and ask why and the ref says, ‘He hit the kid too hard. It was just too hard. You can’t hit that hard.’ I’m screaming that you can’t throw a flag for hitting too hard, where’s that in the rule book and telling this guy, ‘The soccer field is over there.’ But that’s Troy. He does everything full out.”

But Polamalu was making his life important in many other arenas.

Shelley has scrapbooks full of newspaper stories of athletic achievement, but more than that were the honor roll awards and good citizen plaudits.

His high school counselor, Shelley Hankins, recounts how Troy happily played basketball with her daughter, Grace. “He was in the fifth grade and told me that Grace was one of his top 10 girls,” Hankins says. “I don’t think Troy knew 10 girls.”

A good heart. A sweet spirit. A beautiful soul.

That’s what they say about Troy in Tenmile and Winston.

In the house on Strickland Canyon Road, just a mile or so from the post office, just past the Tenmile grade school and the Tenmile Church, where all the boys went to bible study, what they say about Troy is even more important.

Salu’s eyes fill with tears as he looks into the hills where Brandon shot a five-point elk. “Am I proud of Troy? I am so proud of Troy. He tells me, ‘Uncle, I thank you for helping me.’ But I have to say, ‘Troy, thank you for coming to us.’ ”

Troy calls Joe, Brandon and Darren his brothers. He is proud of Kaio, who straightened out his life, played football at Texas El Paso and now teaches and coaches at Santa Ana High. His sisters, Patricia, Sheila and Lupe, stay in touch and sometimes come to his games. Suila, who remarried and moved back to Samoa after Troy came to Oregon, has returned to see Troy play his final two college games.

His uncle Kennedy, one of Salu and Suila’s eight brothers and sisters, is an assistant coach at USC. Another uncle, Al, played football at Penn State. The family is spread out, but Troy loves them all.

But those who know Troy best are Joe, who played football at Oregon State, who got his master’s degree in counseling and who now works at Douglas High; Darren, who is finishing his degree in history and playing rugby at Oregon and who hopes to be a teacher, and Brandon, who writes poetry and has a love of language and learning.

They all, at separate moments, tell of the time, when Troy was 9 or 10 and was skating on his rollerblades. The driveway slanted downhill and went from asphalt into gravel. Troy drew a line far down the driveway and told his brothers he could jump that line.

“No way, we all thought,” Darren says. “But there goes Troy, getting up this tremendous amount of speed, he jumps way up, as far as he can, he’s just flying, and he lands flat out, on his belly, on that gravel. His little lower lip is quivering but he doesn’t cry. And, sure enough, he’s just over the line. That’s Troy. Whatever he says he will do, he will do.”

Polamalu is not your typical big-time college athlete, Shelley says. He didn’t get his driver’s license until after he graduated from high school and has never had a car. Even now, she says, Troy rides his bike everywhere. He has no cell phone, no tattoos, no earrings.

“At an early age, Troy never possessed any material things long enough for them to gain sentimental value,” Brandon wrote about what he found special about Troy. “Later, when possessions did become more abundant, instead of having a ‘Get all I can before someone else does’ attitude, Troy found strength in his needlessness for material possessions. Since I have known Troy, I have seen possessions flow into and out of his hands. But if he does not keep things, where do they go?

“Just ask anyone who has ever been around Troy and I can almost guarantee they have something that was once his.”

Troy’s room in Tenmile is small. It is filled with paintings and plaques in the language and style of Samoa. The end tables Troy made in woodshop. And hanging from the ceiling, its neck in a noose, is a little Bruin bear wearing a UCLA sweater. This is, after all, still the space of a Trojan football player named Troy. A football player, but not only a football player.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.