by Jim Trotter
It was an emotional conversation that ended with Junior agreeing to get help. Hoffman phoned the Betty Ford Center, which treats patients for drug and alcohol abuse. With his consent, she made arrangements for him to enroll in the program. Typical of Junior, however, he failed to show. He told Hoffman that he did not want to leave Mary alone.
Later that year Junior and Mary got into another argument. They had been out drinking that afternoon, and when they returned to the house she found one of his cell phones showing a message from another woman. She was livid. The argument is alleged to have become physically violent. At about five o’clock, Junior phoned Hoffman to come pick him up. When she arrived, Junior and Mary were outside his house. Hoffman stopped and told him to get in.
“He got in, and she came around the car and grabbed the door handle, saying: ‘You can’t go. You can’t go,’” Hoffman said. “I said, ‘Mary, you guys need to cool down. He’s coming to my house.’ She kept saying, ‘You can’t leave me. You can’t leave me.’”
Hoffman drove Junior to her place, 20 minutes south in Del Mar. She made him a chicken-salad sandwich, and they watched the Sunday night football game between the Eagles and 49ers. During this time Junior’s phone was blowing up with calls from Mary. Sometimes he answered, but often he hung up on her. So Mary began calling Hoffman’s house number.
“‘He’s gone to bed. You should let things cool off,’” Hoffman said she told Mary. “She yelled profanities at me: ‘You’re a fucking bitch. Nobody can stand you. Everybody is nice to you because you know Junior, but he hates you. He’s been trying to get rid of you for years.’ I just said that I wasn’t going to listen to it and hung up.”
Junior heard most of the conversation because Hoffman had it on speaker phone. He knew there would be no peace unless he spoke to Mary (who declined to be interviewed for the book), so he called her back. It was roughly 10 o’clock. A policeman answered the phone and told him he needed to return to the house because a woman was filing a domestic violence complaint against him. Hoffman drove Junior back to Oceanside and was greeted by a line of police cars when they turned onto The Strand.
Oh shit, Hoffman thought to herself.
The police removed Junior from Hoffman’s car and put him in handcuffs. They informed him that Mary Nolan was accusing him of striking her. When she spotted him outside, Mary began screaming, saying at one point: “Don’t come back!”
Junior was taken to the Oceanside Police Department and booked on suspicion of felony spousal assault with injury. Hoffman posted bail and drove him to her house, then back to his, where he wanted to get some clothes and a car. They were supposed to meet at a coffee shop later that morning—she had made arrangements for him to stay at La Costa Resort and Spa—but it never happened because Junior drove his Cadillac Escalade off a 100-foot bluff in Carlsbad.
In the hospital, where he was treated for cuts, bruises, and a concussion, he assured family and close friends of two things: he did not strike Mary, and he did not attempt to kill himself. He said he had fallen asleep behind the wheel, which police said was consistent with the lack of skid marks where his car went over the bluff.
Family members wanted to believe him. Junior was known to get sleepy behind the wheel. In high school he had totaled a truck when he fell asleep and drove off the side of the road. His mother still shook her head about it. The top of the vehicle was nearly severed off that day, and when she saw it she thought to herself that there was no way anyone should have survived.
“God had His hand on my son,” she said.
Melissa Waldrop, Junior’s girlfriend in high school and college, often did the driving when they returned home from Los Angeles because he would get sleepy behind the wheel.
But on this day Junior’s inner circle knew there would be a media frenzy and questions about whether he had tried to commit suicide. It was decided that he couldn’t return home because reporters would be waiting. He would have to stay with one of them, but which one? Sadly—and significantly—Gina was the only person in his inner circle of friends who offered to take him in.
He spent several days in her expansive hilltop home, sleeping in a guest room that had the same furniture the two had shared in their bedroom while married. Gradually and softly, Gina tried to walk him through what had happened. His story was not adding up.
Finally, after two or three days, she told him they needed to get out of the house and get some fresh air. She suggested they take a drive. He was against it initially, but eventually agreed. He put on a hooded sweatshirt and pulled the top over his baseball cap. His eyes were covered by dark sunglasses, and he slouched low in the seat.
As they drove, Gina gently asked him once more to recount what happened the night he went over the bluff. When he didn’t speak, she would recite out loud what he had told her. Eventually they found themselves on the street approaching the bluff. Junior was visibly tense and uncomfortable.
“Get me out of here!” he said. “Hurry up!”
More than ever, Gina was having trouble accepting his story. That night, when things had calmed, she asked him about it again. It was two or three in the morning. Their three kids were sleeping. The mood was serious yet nonconfrontational. It was just them and the truth.
“Was there any part of you that wanted to drive off that cliff? Did you do that on purpose?” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
There was a pause, then an empty, glazed expression fell over Junior’s face. During the silence Gina’s mind raced with what she knew: He’s a terrible driver. He falls asleep in the car all the time. It was late at night. He was tired.
Then, for one terrible, frightening moment, it hit her: He did do it on purpose.
“You can’t do that!” she said. “Don’t ever do that! You have three kids. We love you. We need you.”
Gina began crying.
“I’m so concerned about you,” she continued. “I want you to never feel you have to drive off a cliff again. What can I do to help you? I’ll drop everything right now to make you feel and know that you are loved.”
With sad eyes, Junior shifted his jaw, looked away, and said: “I don’t think I’ll ever know that feeling.”
Gina wasn’t the only one suspicious of Junior’s story. Various family members also confronted him about the incident.
“I saw him in the hospital, and he said, ‘Sis, I’m sorry. Don’t believe everything you hear,’” Annette said. “I thought he was groggy and told him to lay down and don’t worry about it. But a few days later I told him, ‘Okay, now I’m going to ask you, because people are talking. Was it or was it not [a suicide attempt]?’ And he said, ‘Sis, I told you not to believe everything you hear.’ He goes, ‘I was tired. I was braking.’ ‘So, okay, it wasn’t? I need to know.’ He said, ‘No.’”
Annette accepted his word, but after a week of listening to public speculation that he had tried to take his life, she confronted him again.
“I can’t ignore it,” she said to him. “I’m going to ask you again, did you?”
“Sis, I wouldn’t do that to Mom and Dad,” he said. “I wouldn’t even do that to you guys. I didn’t do it, and I wouldn’t have thought to do it.”
“Okay, Bug,” she said. “But you really need to see someone. I told you that you were not going to do well retiring. I told you that you were not going to transition well. I asked you before, when you retired, and I’m going to ask you now: Please go get help. Please go see somebody.”
Annette explained later that “there were times when he would blank out. We’ll be sitting there and he’ll just totally blank out. When he snaps out, there’s like a depression look on his face. [I’d say], ‘Bug, are you depressed?’ He’d say, ‘No, no. I’m fine. I just need my family.’”
Annette cautioned him that family wouldn’t be able to fill that void all the time.
“I honestly think you need to see somebody, whether it be a doctor for depression or somebody to help you transition over because you’re
not in that limelight,” she said.
“I don’t need that limelight,” he responded.
“I honestly think you need help,” she answered.
The last time they spoke about it was Thanksgiving of 2010.
“Sis, stop,” he said. “Stop being a mother.”
“I’m not being a mother,” she said. “I’m just being a worried sister.”
Junior protested that everything was fine.
“It’s not,” she countered. “If you’re calling me late in the evening or early in the morning to come to your house, you can’t tell me you’re okay. I love the fact that you’re spending time with family, but there are times where you are as blank as day.”
Annette thought about the conversation months later. “He could be around family and enjoying himself, then all of a sudden, with the snap of a finger, he’s got that blank face,” she said. “Then, with another snap of the finger, he’s out of it.”
Rev. Benson Mauga, one of Junior’s uncles, also had concerns about whether Junior had tried to take his life. Mauga was out of town when the incident occurred, and when he returned he wanted to get Junior alone with his parents to address the rumors. Unannounced, Mauga drove Mama and Papa Seau to the restaurant to meet with Junior, who was in his private office.
“I want you to come sit down,” Mauga said to his nephew. “It’s very serious what I have to ask you. You’re probably tired of hearing it. I want you to say it right in front of Mom and Dad. Did you really do it?”
Junior was silent for a moment, but those couple of seconds were an eternity for Mauga.
“From there, I knew that he probably had some kind of thought about it but didn’t want to confess it in front of them,” Mauga said. “He said, ‘No, I fell asleep.’ But I already saw it in his eyes. He just didn’t want to hurt the parents.
“I said to myself, Okay. I see it. I feel it,” Mauga continued. “I could sense it even by the way he got up and stepped from around the desk. He did it slowly. It was like he’s thinking, should he admit it right there when he had the opportunity with Mom and Dad—while I was there to comfort and slow the dad? His dad is very quick with anger, and it might erupt in the wrong manner. But he didn’t do it. He told them he fell asleep.”
Privately, Junior told two people who didn’t want to be quoted in the book that he did indeed drive off the bluff intentionally. Either way, the incident was a clear sign he was in need of help. But immediately afterward he was unwilling or unprepared to accept it.
“We talked a lot those several days that he stayed with us,” Gina said, “and I was saying to him, ‘This is a chance, you have another chance. You’re lucky to be alive, you’re lucky you’re not in a wheelchair or something horrible didn’t happen to you. You can walk away from this incident, and God’s given you another chance. Let’s make it count.’ I was trying to be positive and help him see that there’s a lot to live for, and there’s a lot of good things happening around him . . . and there’s so much possibility out there for him. I was met with a really blank stare. I know he was exhausted and tired from the accident, but there was just blank. It’s like he was looking at me but not really connecting.”
One person who did manage to connect with Junior was Aaron Taylor, his former teammate. Taylor had concerns following the accident, so he reached out in a supportive yet non-intrusive manner.
“I sent him a text: ‘Hey, man. Heard what happened. You alright? Letting you know if you want somebody to talk to, or just listen, I’m here,’” Taylor said. “He reached out to me by phone. He said, ‘I need help. I’m an addict. I can’t stop drinking. My life is spinning. I don’t know what’s going on. The pressures are getting to me. I don’t like the man that I see when I look in the mirror. I’ve done fucked up shit as a father.’”
Junior told Taylor how he had promised to take son Jake to a lacrosse tournament, but failed to do so because he was hungover.
“He had a lot of shame and a lot of guilt about that,” Taylor said. “He cried when he told me that story. As a dad with sons, I remember it being powerful. That was as low as I had ever seen him. I remember playing against Junior, I remember playing with him—he was the iconic alpha male warrior, the toughest of the tough. But he was as broken as I’ve ever seen a person, let alone him, which in my business of recovery means there’s hope. I was like, Sweet! This cat is ready.”
Taylor suggested that they attend a 12-step meeting. Junior agreed. The session was at a local church, with eight to 10 people present. Taylor was nervous about whether Junior would feel comfortable enough to open up. It’s one thing to be John Doe admitting your frailties and vulnerabilities to strangers. It’s quite another to be someone whose name and face are as synonymous with San Diego as Sea World or the San Diego Zoo.
Hi, my name is Junior and I’m an addict, an alcoholic. I’m out of control. I’ve got a lot of shit going on.
“He shared feeling a lot of pressure from his family, everybody always wanting something from him, letting people down around him,” Taylor recalled. “He didn’t get right down to the nitty-gritty, but I was shocked at how open and candid he was about how he was feeling, the sense of not feeling in control and what seemed, to me, to be an awareness and an embracing of where he was at.”
They attended another meeting at a sponsor’s garage. About 12 to 14 people were in attendance. Again, Junior opened up and spoke about his addictions and the pressures he was feeling. He also was attending Bible study classes with other friends. Taylor felt a sense of pride because he thought his friend was on the road to recovery. But typical of their relationship, Junior went off the grid and stopped responding to his messages. He also would go for long stretches without speaking with Gina or the kids.
“We heard from him generally every week, sometimes several times a week,” Gina said. “But then he’d go several weeks without any communication. The longest span he ever went without us communicating was about two and a half to three months, and I asked him, ‘Where have you been? What’s been going on?’ And he just said, ‘G, I’m just in a really dark place.’ His exact words I remember were, ‘I’m so dark that even picking up my surfboard doesn’t make me happy. That wouldn’t even put a smile on my face.’
“That was horribly concerning because the one place of solace for him was to get in the ocean, and he lived right on the beach there in Oceanside. That was his one form of peace, of gaining just a moment of quiet time. It always made him happy because all the guys were out there surfing, and he always went to breakfast with them. He always had a place that he could go where there were buddies around, and camaraderie with friends and other surfers, and going to the gym. And he just said he didn’t want to do any of that.”
Junior’s financial decisions were also becoming a concern. After being defrauded by Gillette in 1996, he turned to local financial planner Dale Yahnke to oversee his portfolio. The two bonded in part because Junior wasn’t looking for the big splash. He was typically conservative with his money and his investments. He and Yahnke hit it off because, like Junior, Yahnke liked to think long-term.
Yahnke’s goal was to make sure of one thing: that when Junior retired, he would have to work only if he wanted to, not because he needed to. But the young man who had always been so mindful of his money, who used to have nightly receipts from the restaurant faxed to his dorm room during training camp so he could review the numbers at one or two in the morning, was becoming increasingly erratic with his spending.
He was taking more trips to Las Vegas and San Diego County casinos, which coincided with his failed investments in a project to build 15 Ruby Tuesday restaurants in Southern California over a five-year period. His advisers, friends, and family all pleaded with him not to do the deal, saying the risk was too great. But he proceeded anyway and lost big.
He initially invested $300,000, but only two of the restaurants were built, and each was a money pit. Compounding matters was that he had made guarantees on the leases that kept him
on the hook even after the businesses failed. Yet despite those disasters, he still could have landed on firm financial ground if not for his regular trips to casinos.
The Bellagio and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas were two of his favorite spots. Some family members believe that he gambled in an attempt to recover losses from the restaurants, but others who spent time with him at the tables said he loved the adrenaline rush of chasing the next big win.
Casinos attract highly paid athletes by presenting the facade that the players are getting something for nothing. They send private jets and put them up in presidential suites, all at “no charge.” Then they give the athletes a line of credit based on their income or worth—for someone like Junior it could be millions of dollars—with the understanding that they wouldn’t have to repay any losses (known as markers) until the casino requested repayment.
Junior was known to sit alone at a blackjack table in the high-rollers room and play five to seven hands at a time, often with chips valued at $5,000 or higher. His personal driver, known as Big Tony, claimed to have seen Junior go up $2.7 million in 20 minutes, then lose more than $3 million in the next half-hour.
U-T San Diego reported that over his gambling lifetime with MGM International, which owned the Bellagio and Caesars Palace, Junior had a net buy-in of $6.8 million for all of its properties—$4.1 million of which came from markers. By the end of November 2010, U-T San Diego reported, he owed $800,000 in markers to Caesars Palace and $500,000 in markers to the Bellagio. His average bet at the Bellagio was nearly $39,000.
“I knew that what he was doing in Vegas was going to end only one way, and I thought it would be humiliating for him,” Yahnke said. “I tried to talk him out of it. He didn’t listen.”
“We landed in Vegas one time, and immediately, within hours, he won eight hundred something thousand dollars, okay?” said Junior’s friend Jay Michael Auwae. “So he comes back up to the room, and I said, ‘Let’s go home, surf, chill, pay some bills.’ But after dinner a whale-watcher [a casino handler charged with roping in big-money gamblers] comes up to the room. I’m saying, ‘June, enough already.’ And he goes, ‘No, bro. One more time. I’m gonna clip ’em.’ Not even two hours later, he comes back up and hits the table with a glass and starts cussing. I was like, ‘Please don’t tell me . . .’ He had lost it all. He’s lying on his bed looking at the ceiling, and I go, ‘Buddy, you gotta stop this, man.’ He goes, ‘We got this. We’ll get ’em tomorrow.’ The next morning the whale-watchers show up. June got another half-million dollars [up], and he goes back down and loses the whole thing.”