Nyeholt, Orr linked by parallel journeys

Anyone familiar with the charity juggernaut that is “Swim With Mike,” the annual USC fund-raiser that provides scholarships for physically challenged former athletes, knows that it was born of friendship and brotherhood.

Ron Orr, a USC athletic administrator and former Trojans swimmer, launched the swim-a-thon in 1981 after former teammate Mike Nyeholt was paralyzed from the chest down in a dirt-bike accident. Both men grew up in San Gabriel. They swam together at San Gabriel High and USC, where they were three-time All-Americans and helped the Trojans win three national championships.

And so Orr, knowing that Nyeholt would need a specially equipped van to help him adapt to his new circumstances, rallied fellow swimmers to churn laps to raise money for his longtime friend.

Less known is that the altruistic Orr was in need of a lift too -- figuratively and literally. He too was at a crisis point.

“When this happened,” he says, “I was at a bottom myself.”

While Nyeholt lay immobilized after hitting a bump in the desert floor, pitching himself over the handlebars of his dirt bike and landing on the top of his head, Orr was stuck too, fretting over how to tell his mother that he’d been arrested -- again -- for drunk driving. And that his driver’s license had been suspended.

He finally was ready to admit it: He had a problem.

“After Mike’s accident,” Orr says, “it kind of put everything I was going through into perspective because I had a choice and he didn’t. I went to visit him in the hospital and I said, ‘Mike, I’m an alcoholic and I’m going to check myself into a care unit. I’m not going to be able to drive for three years, so we’re going to have to raise money for a van because you’re going to have to drive me around.’

“That’s how it started and it kept going from there.”

In March 1981, two months after Nyeholt’s accident, Swim for Mike raised about $58,000, more than twice the cost of a fully equipped van. Nyeholt suggested to Orr that the remainder be used to set up a scholarship fund.

“I thought somebody else would get the rest of the money and that would be that,” Nyeholt, a successful money manager at Capital Group, says during an interview at his downtown office. “But God bless that Ron Orr. He takes that statement and we have an ongoing fund-raising event. I don’t think either one of us ever thought that this thing would continue on like it has.”

Renamed Swim With Mike in its second year, when Nyeholt joined the others in swimming laps, the annual event has raised $7.5 million and provided scholarships for 69 former athletes who have overcome life-altering accidents or illnesses, among them Kristina Ripatti, an LAPD officer and former soccer player who was shot and paralyzed from the chest down while on duty in June 2006.

Meanwhile, its founders have benefited too, if less tangibly.

For Orr, who shares cautionary tales of his alcohol abuse with college students, shepherding the event has helped him stay sober.

This year’s Swim With Mike, Saturday at USC, comes 27 years after Orr took his last drink, downing a bottle of wine as he packed for rehab.

Two weeks ago, in what has become an annual tradition, Nyeholt, 51, helped Orr, 52, celebrate another year of sobriety by presenting the associate athletic director with a cake at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Their parallel journeys, both men say, have profoundly strengthened the already tight bond between them.

“Out of the two of us reaching a bottom in our lives so close together,” Orr says, “this program was started that has helped nearly 70 other people who have gone through something just as challenging. I find it very spiritual.

“Whenever I see a scholarship recipient here on campus, I think, ‘We made a difference in that person’s life at a very low point.’

“I call it a God shot.”

For Nyeholt, Swim With Mike is a source of strength.

“It makes me realize how lucky I am,” Nyeholt says. “We’ve had so many recipients who are a lot worse off than I am. And to see the incredible drive of these young men and women who have been given this extra burden to carry through life, I say to myself, ‘Quit feeling sorry for yourself and try to do as well as they’re doing.’ ”

Their hope is that the program, which has spread its reach by awarding scholarships to non-USC students, will outlive them both. It’s a goal that became a little more realistic last fall when the Mayr Foundation, chaired by former USC quarterback Pat Haden, established a $250,000 endowment for Swim With Mike, the richest contribution Orr and his group have ever been gifted.

Last year’s Swim With Mike raised more than $1 million, establishing a one-year high-water mark for the event, and satellite swims have started at Hawaii and Stanford. Another is being planned at Connecticut.

“Obviously, it’s a tremendous source of pride,” Nyeholt says. “I played only a small role in it, but I had the right friends who got behind it.”

Ron Orr in particular.

God shots all around.

--

jerome.crowe@latimes.com