Golden Touch

He stood on a victory platform in Barcelona, Spain, at the 1992 Olympics while a gold medal was hung around his neck. That moment, Oscar De La Hoya, son of Mexican immigrants, raised in a working-class neighborhood in East Los Angeles, became known as the Golden Boy.

He soon turned professional and raised the gold standard for the lighter weight divisions, becoming the richest non-heavyweight ever, with ring earnings of nearly $200 million.

Today, the end of the 32-year-old De La Hoya’s ring career is in sight. His business partner, Richard Schaefer, is trying to negotiate a farewell fight against Felix Trinidad.

But there appears to be no end in sight for De La Hoya’s burgeoning financial empire. Guided by Schaefer, a former Swiss banker, and fortified by a revolving group of investors, De La Hoya is trying to become a Golden Boy in the business world as well, with an emphasis on the Latino community.

“We look at what Magic Johnson has done in the African American community and we want to try to do the same kind of thing in the Latino market,” De La Hoya said of Johnson, whose financial holdings have been estimated at nearly half a billion dollars. “We want to empower Latinos.”

It is not necessary to be Latino, however, to feel De La Hoya’s golden touch. According to Schaefer, it extends to:

* Golden Boy Promotions. His boxing company, now in its fourth year, has 18 fighters under contract and will produce 30 boxing cards this year, including 24 televised events, in six states. De La Hoya is the promoter of Saturday night’s Bernard Hopkins-Howard Eastman middleweight title fight at Staples Center.

* Golden Boy Partners. De La Hoya’s investment group has bought a 12-story office building in downtown Los Angeles, a 150,000-square-foot structure with about 120 tenants, to be named the Golden Boy Building. De La Hoya’s own offices are on the third floor.

“We don’t want the top floor. That’s ego,” Schaefer said. “We are trying to stay low key and run a business.”

Not too low key though. A statue of De La Hoya will soon be erected in the lobby.

De La Hoya’s group has also bought an office building on Madison Avenue in New York.

* Golden Boy Storage. De La Hoya’s group is planning a chain of self-storage units around Southern California.

* Spanish-language newspapers. Acon, a De La Hoya company, has a paper in each of the country’s three largest metropolitan areas, La Opinion in Los Angeles, El Diario in New York and La Raza in Chicago.

* Minority interests in everything from Equal, the sugar substitute, to Pay By Touch, a new method of consumer identification through fingerprinting, which could negate the need for credit cards.

De La Hoya and Schaeffer are also planning to form an investment fund for future enterprises. And through the Oscar De La Hoya Foundation, De La Hoya donates to various charities, many in the Los Angeles Latino community.

None of this would be happening if it weren’t for Schaefer, whose judgment was seriously questioned by both his father, himself a banker, and the Swiss Bank Corp., when he told them that he was giving up his lucrative position to go to work for an American prizefighter.

“It’s time to come back to Switzerland,” his father, also named Richard, told the younger Schaefer.

Instead, Schaefer looked at De La Hoya’s attributes -- a storied ring career, movie-star good looks, a huge female fan base and his ability to appeal to both the white and Latino communities -- and decided to gamble.

To Schaefer, though, it wasn’t really a gamble.

“We are building a foundation that will last a long time,” he said.

The base of that foundation is this nation’s growing Latino population, especially in California.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this country’s Latino population was at 38.8 million in July 2002, an increase of nearly 10% from 2000.

In California, Latinos have long been the largest ethnic minority. In 1990, according to the bureau, they made up 25.4% of the population. By 2000, that figure had grown to 32.4%.

Latinos’ purchasing power, at $580 billion in 2002, will grow to $926.1 billion in 2007, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

As a still-active fighter, De La Hoya would figure to be attractive to the younger segment of the population, and that too relates well to the Latino community. Whereas 25.7% of the U.S. population was under 18 in 2000, 35% of Latinos were younger than 18, according to the 2000 census.

“Oscar De La Hoya reinforces the dream that, if you work hard and are good at what you do, you can get ahead,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC. “Oscar De La Hoya is a welcome sight in that area. Especially in his charity work. Many Hispanics are new to philanthropy per se, outside of the church and taking care of their families.”

Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A., says De La Hoya can serve as a galvanizing figure in the Latino community.

“There is a vacuum there,” he said. “He is a sports figure turned into a primary brown capitalist. We haven’t historically had many people of color coming up like that. There aren’t too many other Magic Johnsons.

“Now, Oscar has been a dividing force in the Latino community. He has never caught on with those who have had the immigrant experience and feel he moved away from his base, feel that he has forgotten his community.

“This [growth as a businessman] will not nullify those who have been critical of him during his boxing career, who feel that he thinks of Oscar first, second and third. They will still see him as a jerk with a big enough ego to put his name on a building.

“But those who have always supported him will champion him now. They will say it’s a great image, seeing a Latino having the capital to play with the big boys.”

Comedian Paul Rodriguez, another influential voice in the Latino community, said he thinks more changes are coming.

“I think with all the land he’s buying, he will change his name to Oscar De La Renta, as a reminder the rent is due the first of the month,” Rodriguez said. “And his fights will no longer be fights. They will be hostile takeovers.”

Although he has won titles in six weight categories and no longer needs his income from the ring to support his lifestyle, De La Hoya, coming off a September knockout by Bernard Hopkins, is determined to have one more fight.

“I can’t go out with that defeat,” De La Hoya said.

Schaefer has made an offer to promoter Don King, who claims to still hold options on future Hopkins fights, even though the middleweight champion is now a partner in Golden Boy Promotions.

Schaefer has told King that, if he drops the legal claims, an agreement could be reached for a Hopkins-Trinidad rematch -- Hopkins defeated Trinidad in 2001 -- followed by a Trinidad-De La Hoya fight.

“It seems silly for Oscar, with all his money, to keep fighting,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like Bill Gates still working in a computer store.”

De La Hoya, however, will enter the ring one more time.

“Then,” he said, “we can make some real money.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tale of the Tape

How Howard Eastman and Bernard Hopkins match up for Saturday’s 160-pound middleweight title fight at Staples Center (TV: HBO, 6:45 p.m.)

*--* EASTMAN HOPKINS BIRTHPLACE Guyana Philadelphia AGE 34 40 HEIGHT 5-11 6-2 RECORD 40-1 45-2-1 KNOCKOUTS 34 32 REACH* 74 75 NECK* 17 15 CHEST* 40 39 BICEPS* 14 13 FOREARM* 11 11

*--*

* in inches