But even afterward, she remained unsure.
“I don’t know why I agreed to come,” she told me. “I had the same invitation from Ricky Martin, but I’m a grown woman, I made my decision, and let’s just take it from there. See what happens.”
There was still no romance in our relationship, but we were definitely getting closer. I took her to Disneyland, introduced her to my family, and had her meet Jacob.
Millie was taken aback to learn that I had a child out of wedlock, but when she saw how loving I was with Jacob, she liked that. Kids are reserved a very special place in her heart, and when she meets others who feel the same, she connects with them.
What affected Millie more than seeing Jacob was going to my father’s house. Not in a positive way.
“Why did you do that?” she asked me after we left. “We’re not a couple. We’re just friends.”
I, of course, wanted us to be much more.
It took a while, a long while, but after about two years of commuting to San Juan, I decided the time was right. While in Puerto Rico, I placed a call to my jeweler in L.A. and ordered a ring. I knew what I wanted. It was about six carats. I told the jeweler to make it as quickly as he could and FedEx it to me.
Yeah, I trusted a precious little package like that to be shipped across the country.
It arrived two days later. I took a look at it, felt my nerves erupt, shoved the box in my pocket, and joined Millie for a visit to her parents’ home.
Millie’s mother and father are the easiest people to be around, unassuming and warm. Her father, Jesús, is an engineer; her mother, also named Millie, a homemaker. They are far removed from the two worlds Millie and I inhabit, sports and entertainment. Churchgoing, decent people, their priority is family. Their home is always filled with joy and music. All of Millie’s siblings either sing or play instruments.
It was a typical visit to the house, everybody’s spirits bright. So Millie looked up perplexed when I turned to her parents and said, “Could I talk to you on a serious note?”
As I sat everybody down, my own nervousness came out. I was wearing a white T-shirt, nylon pants, and sandals. I started sweating so heavily that I became soaked. It was as if I had just stepped out of a shower.
“I’d like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage,” I said to her parents.
That got Millie’s attention. There was a big pause, a few seconds of silence in the room that seemed like hours to me. Then her father simply said, “Yes.”
Her parents saw how I was with their daughter and how much in love I was.
“Hey, wait,” said Millie. “What about me?”
I hadn’t forgotten her. I took the ring out of my pocket with my sweaty hands, dropped to my knees, and said, “Millie, will you marry me?”
She, too, paused; then she, too, said, “Yes.”
As I put the ring on her finger, Millie’s eyes got wide. “Where did you get that?” she asked.
“FedEx,” I replied with a big grin.
We were married about three weeks later in San Juan. We had tried to keep it low-key so we could enjoy the ceremony with just family and friends, but something like that wasn’t going to stay secret. There’s always a leak.
Keep in mind, news that I had become a commuter suitor had become well known to the Puerto Rican media over the previous two years. Like bloodhounds on a hot scent, the media was always trying to find out what we were up to and if a wedding was imminent. It was crazy.
We decided to get married on October 5, 2001. Only a select few knew our plans. The other invited guests were just told they were coming to a family dinner. We even secretly flew in the dress Millie was going to wear.
By the wedding day, we were proud of ourselves, figuring we had gotten away with it.
The plan was to go to Millie’s grandmother’s house to dress and then head over to the wedding site, an old building that had once housed government offices.
While Millie was in the back of the house changing into her gown, I was in the front with her brothers, getting ready. The TV was on in the background, and all of a sudden it caught our attention. There was the wedding site being shown live for all of San Juan to see, with field reporters staked out at all the entrances as if they were covering a hostage situation.
In a way, they were. Millie and I had become hostages, trapped in our celebrity lives.
We flipped the channels, but we couldn’t get away from the wedding scene. It was on every one.
There was my father, microphones in his face as he entered the building. There was my sister. In all, about forty people were invited.
As I continued to get dressed, one of the reporters on-site had a bulletin. “Here comes Oscar De La Hoya himself,” said the reporter excitedly. This limo had pulled up and a guy in a tuxedo with the jacket pulled over his head had leaped out and was running into the building, reporters chasing him, asking him how he felt.
It was Eric Gomez being Eric. He loves to pull pranks.
By the time we had finished the ceremony and the celebrating and were leaving, it was 6 A.M. and the sun was out.
And can you believe it? Those reporters were still there.
XXVI
MY GUARDIAN ANGEL
It’s been almost two decades since I last saw my mother, but I still feel her presence.
Never more so than the night I took a spin in my brother’s new car. Anxious to see the Mercedes-Benz he had leased, I had him pick me up for a dinner we attended in West L.A.
When we got back to my place in Whittier, it was nearly 1 A.M. I wasn’t ready to call it a night, however. Having spent the whole evening meeting and greeting people, I hadn’t consumed so much as a mouthful of food. And now my passion at that time—tacquitos at Jack in the Box—was calling out to me.
I borrowed my brother’s car for the food run to take a test drive because I was thinking of getting that model for myself.
When I got to the drive-thru, the eyes of the server at the window lit up as he recognized me.
“Oscar De La Hoya?” he said. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Tacquitos,” I said with a smile.
Back on the freeway in the fast lane, I had a wide-open drive so late at night, only the occasional car in sight. I gobbled down my tacquitos, pulled out my cell phone, called my brother, and then called a few girlfriends.
All of a sudden the lights on the dashboard went out. That’s weird, I thought.
It got a lot weirder very quickly. I could feel the steering wheel locking on me and the car slowed down, from seventy to sixty-five, down to forty, thirty, twenty, ten.
I looked to my left, but there was no escape lane, just the retaining wall. I looked for my cell phone, couldn’t find it, then looked in my rearview mirror. Fortunately, I saw nothing but darkness.
Not for long. In the distance, I suddenly saw a pair of headlights getting larger and larger. The object was coming full speed in my lane.
It’s the lane I was stuck with since I couldn’t steer out of it. And I realized, with my taillights also out, this driver might not see me until it was too late.
That’s exactly what happened. As my car totally died, coming to a complete stop, the car was upon me. I hunched over, petrified, awaiting the impact.
I guess the driver spotted me at the last instant because he swerved over, only sideswiping me. I could hear the screeching of tires, the tearing of my bumper, and then I saw his taillights. He didn’t stop.
I knew I might not be so lucky the next time. Again, I frantically looked for my cell phone. Where was it? I had just been using it minutes ago.
Looking out the passenger side, I saw a call box across several lanes on the shoulder of the freeway. That was reassuring.
What I saw next was frightening. More lights in my rearview mirror. Many more. Enough to fill up three lanes.
Get out, I told myself. Just get out.
I leaped out and starting running across the freeway. Ever try to o
utrun a car moving with the pedal to the metal? I felt like an out-of-shape heavyweight racing a flyweight. Those cars seemed to be bearing down on me.
Somehow, I made it to the safety of the freeway shoulder just as I smelled tires burning and heard the hellacious sound of metal smashing into metal. Turning around, I saw a huge truck crash into the back of what had been my brother’s car, causing it to fold up like a beach chair in a hurricane. That started a chain reaction, the sound of several other cars colliding reverberating across the asphalt.
My hands shaking, I used the call box to summon help and then just stood on the shoulder, afraid to venture into the wreckage for fear I’d find a dead body. A small fire erupted, smoke adding to the chaos of the scene.
Several home owners made their way up the embankment, pointing at the metal pancake that had been the Mercedes, asking aloud what kind of a person would abandon his car in such a spot.
I began to circulate among the victims, admitting that it was my car, explaining how it had inexplicably lost power, offering my sincerest regrets.
I found one man lying on the ground, holding his nose, blood spread across his face. I tried to explain to him what had happened. He looked up at me through bleary eyes, focused, and then an animated look crossed his bruised face.
“It’s Oscar De La Hoya,” he said loudly. “Now I can tell everybody Oscar De La Hoya broke my nose.”
If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have laughed at how ridiculous that sounded.
When the cops arrived, they first checked to see if I had been drinking or using drugs. They soon satisfied themselves that there was nothing I could have done to prevent the mayhem.
Fortunately, that broken nose was the worst injury in the whole pileup.
I never did find out what caused the car to stall like that, but I am convinced my mother was looking out for me that night. I say that because there was a reason I couldn’t find my phone. It turns out, it had fallen between the seats just before the power went out. If I had known where it was, I would have used it to call 911, been sitting there when that truck came barreling down the road, and might well have been crushed to death.
It’s incidents like those that tell me my mother is still protecting me.
I did make a change in my thinking the night of the Fernando Vargas fight.
It had nothing to do with my feelings about Vargas, my performance that night, or even the outcome. It was a subtle change, unnoticed by all but those who knew me best. But to those who did notice, it sent a message that I was taking a meaningful step in my life.
When the referee, Jay Nady, was giving Vargas and me our prefight instructions in the ring, I looked Vargas right in the eye.
So what?
It was the first time since my mother had died that I had done so with an opponent. In every other fight, while the referee gave his instructions, I stared at the ceiling, imagining my mother looking down on me.
The change wasn’t because I felt she had abandoned me. I think, to this day, that she is watching over me. It’s just that, a few months shy of my thirtieth birthday, I thought it was time to break away and do things on my own, to look to the future rather than the past.
In my immediate future was Fernando Vargas, a fighter I had grown to detest. He had been chasing me for a long time, trying to lure me into the ring by questioning my ability, my character, and even my heritage. He loved to say he was more Mexican than I was, whatever that means.
Vargas proved you couldn’t take anything he said seriously when he claimed he had fallen in the snow while jogging in Big Bear, only to see me coming up the road. In this fairy tale, Vargas said he stuck out his hand for me to help him up, but I ran right by him, giving him only a cold shoulder.
It never happened. I cannot picture myself refusing to help somebody who had fallen. Maybe he made up that story to stir fan and media interest in seeing us settle our differences in the ring, or maybe he just needed a reason to hate me if I was going to be a future opponent.
I had a different reason for disliking him. His claim that he was more Mexican than I because, in his mind, he was more macho, got to me. It ate at me inside, though I wouldn’t show it. I thought I had put all that behind me after beating Chávez a second time. I had finally gotten the Mexican fans to accept and respect me, and now along comes Vargas with that same old crap.
It made me want to destroy him, really hurt him. Vargas was the first opponent I had ever felt that way about. If his goal had been to fire me up enough to fight him, he succeeded.
Our mutual dislike became physical at a press conference in L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel. As we stood face-to-face for photos, I made some remark about his weak chin and he shoved me, causing handlers on both sides to jump in to prevent a riot. Ricardo Jimenez, a publicist for Bob Arum, tried to play peacemaker and wound up with a broken leg.
With both Vargas and me training in Big Bear, it was inevitable that we would cross paths. One night, about ten of us showed up at a restaurant where Vargas was already eating with his team.
A couple of my guys told me not to go in. “No,” I said, “I’m hungry.”
The tension was thick when we entered. Would the fight be held here, far from the view of paying customers?
Vargas stood up and marched out, his team quickly following.
Another time, as I began my early-morning jog around Big Bear Lake, there was Vargas just finishing up.
“Ha, ha,” he yelled out like a child, “I woke up earlier than you.”
Looking at the plastic sweatsuit he was wearing, I yelled back, “Keep losing that weight, keep draining yourself.”
The fight was weeks away, but the mind games were already under way.
At the weigh-in Vargas whipped off his shirt and started flexing his muscles. I had to admit, I was impressed. This was a guy who had a history of flabbiness, but he looked big and ripped that day. I thought he might be on something because he had been bragging all through training camp that his appearance was going to surprise everyone.
After the fight, a blood test revealed the reason for the surprise. Vargas had taken stanozolol, an anabolic steroid. For testing positive, he was suspended for nine months and fined $100,000 by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
When the match began, my first impression was that I was going up again a heavier, stronger fighter, someone in a bigger weight class than 154. More like a light heavyweight.
Vargas didn’t hurt me at all. I kept remembering all those things he had been saying about me and that just hardened my resolve that nothing was going to beat me that night.
Vargas slowed down appreciably in the ninth round, my right hand hitting him at will. You could see by the look on his face that he was defeated.
When I got Vargas in trouble on the ropes in the eleventh round, I started firing away. I would have kept on throwing punches if referee Joe Cortez hadn’t stepped in to stop me. It felt great hitting Vargas, but I could have seriously hurt him.
When I learned he had used steroids, it made my victory that much sweeter.
After things calmed down, I wanted to patch things up with Vargas, so a meeting was arranged at a Pasadena restaurant.
“You know I beat you,” he told me after we sat down, the sunglasses he was wearing when he entered still covering his eyes. “Come on, give me the rematch. You’ve got to give me the rematch.”
I tried to be conciliatory, suggesting we might be able to work together on future boxing ventures.
He wasn’t listening. He just kept asking for the rematch over and over.
Finally, I had enough. “Good luck to you,” I said, and walked out, invigorated by the thought that I’d never have to listen to him again.
XXVII
CASHING IN MY CHIPS: A GAMBLER REFORMS
I spent a lot of time in the Vegas casinos, locked in a world of dice and cards. When I was in, I was all in. Gambling became a real problem for me. When I got the bug, it was hard to shake.
A good ex
ample was my stay at Bellagio the night a Félix Trinidad fight was on TV. Hotel mogul Steve Wynn came over to watch with me, because he wanted my analysis of the match.
After the fight, five of us decided to go hit the clubs. Walking through the casino, we passed the baccarat room. When I looked over, it was calling to me.
I said I was just going to play for a little while, that’s all. It was around ten thirty at night.
I played and played. The rest of the group, with the exception of Raul, left, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the table. It was like I was chained there. Especially when I got down $250,000.
I finally did leave at three…the next afternoon.
And I didn’t leave empty-handed. When I cashed in my chips, I had a total of $1 million, which they gave me in cash. I was walking around the casino with one mil in my pocket.
The next day, I took the money to play baccarat at Caesars Palace and lost it all, the entire million.
I didn’t have a favorite spot in Vegas to gamble. I played everywhere from Rio to Bellagio, depending on where I was staying. Sometimes I would be sitting at home, get the itch, call some friends, charter a plane, and we’d be in Vegas just like that.
I was a heavy gambler for about six or seven years, always playing either baccarat or craps. I would usually open up a $100,000 line of credit when I sat down, but on three occasions, I opened up a million-dollar line.
There was never a problem getting credit. I guess they kind of knew who I was.
When I lost, the competitive side of me would come out. I would think I could beat the house if I just stayed at it. But even I had my limits. Usually. If I had a $100,000 line, 90 percent of the time I wouldn’t exceed it if I was losing. I would just walk away.
Once in a while, I would go crazy. I remember one time at the baccarat table, I played three hands at once, each for $100,000. Luckily, I won two out of the three, but it was bets like that, seeing all those chips stacked up, that made me ask myself what I was doing.
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