CHAVULO SHARES PERSONAL TRAGEDIES WITH HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

He was the Canadian heavyweight champion for 21 years, fought all the big
names in boxing like Ali, Frazier and Foreman, and is in the World Boxing
Hall of Fame, but that's not what George Chuvalo came to Bonnyville to talk
about.

In fact, little of Chuvalo's presentation, made to high school students from
all over the Bonnyville area at Bonnyville centralized high school on
Wednesday, had to do with his boxing career at all. Instead it served simply
as the background to what Chuvalo considers an important message to bring to
young people - not to get involved with drugs.

Chuvalo and his wife had five children. Three of his sons died because of
their involvement in drugs and his wife committed suicide after the second
son died.

Chuvalo, 66, opened his presentation by reinforcing that teenagers make the
most important decisions of their lives right now. He pointed out that
doctors, lawyers, teachers and athletes don't decide on their occupations
when they're 30 or 40 or 50 when they're already established, but when
they're young.

"It's the most important time of your life, when you make important,
monumental life decisions," Chuvalo said.

He said now is when people also decide to do things like smoking and drugs,
not when they're older.

"The overwhelming majority of people who become addicted started with
cigarettes," Chuvalo said.

When they were young, three of Chuvalo's sons got involved in drugs. His
youngest Jesse, was the first to get hooked on heroin and was the first to
die. He shot himself in the family's home.

Jesse injured his knee in a dirt bike accident and his doctors put him on
Vicodin to take away the pain. At a party, someone told Jesse they had
something that would help with the pain. That was his introduction to
heroin. Four months later all three boys were addicted and five months after
that Jesse was dead.

"After Jesse died, Steven and George Lee become full-blown, hard core
addicts," Chuvalo said.

He said the boys would go into bars looking for drugs and at the first
flicker of the drug in the dealer's hand they would crap their pants.

"It hurts me to talk about it," Chuvalo said. "But I have to. I have to let
you know what it's like."

Chuvalo said their bodies craved the drug so badly they lost control of
their bodily functions when they saw it. With feces running down their legs,
the boys would buy the drugs, then head to the washrooms where they'd shoot
up.

"Only then would they clean themselves up," Chuvalo said.

Chuvalo said he remembers Steven overdosing 15 times in a two month period.
He took him to the hospital once, where staff revived him, only to come back
and find his son missing.

He'd taken off with half of his clothes in freezing temperatures to go find
more drugs. Chuvalo found him facedown in the family's rec room. Steven told
him that after doctors revived him all he could think about was getting high
again. He was so focussed on the drug that he walked 16 miles home in -20
degree Celsius weather. Two and a half weeks later, Steven was found passed
out in a snowbank at 4 a.m. Chuvalo took him to the hospital and he survived
again.

The last of the 15 overdoses occurred in February 1987. Chuvalo was driving
when he heard on the radio that his sons had been arrested for robbing a
drug store. The boys had used a hatchet to intimidate the drug store
employees into giving them drugs. The police responded but the boys fled.
Chuvalo said as the police were chasing them, the boys were reaching into
the bag they had the drugs in and swallowing the pills in handfuls. They
eventually got on a bus, continuing to swallow pills as the bus traveled.
Three stops later they got off the bus. The first boy off flopped down on
the sidewalk and the second one flopped down on top of him. Both boys ended
up in jail.

Both George Lee and Steven spent years in jail for their part in armed
robberies, mostly from robbing drug stores to get drugs. George Lee was the
second to die. Four days out of jail he was found at a hotel, slumped over
with a needle in his arm.

Two days after George Lee's funeral, Chuvalo's wife committed suicide,
overdosing on pills she took from the boys after they robbed a drug store.

Chuvalo said Steven was so hooked on drugs he was stoned at his mother's
funeral. He eventually ended up in jail again and shortly after he was
released he overdosed on heroin and was found by his sister.

Steven's death was so quick that he was found with a cigarette grasped
between the fingers of his right hand. After shooting up he never even had
time to light it before he was dead.

"My son couldn't beat heroin, none of my sons could beat heroin," Chuvalo
said.

Steven had planned on touring the country with his dad to talk to kids about
drugs and what it was like to be a drug addict. He never got that chance. A
big part of Chuvalo's presentation involves what Steven would have said to
kids if he had the chance.

Chuvalo said education is the single most important determinant of how well
someone will do in life. He said doing well in school leads to feeling
successful which in turn leads to good self-esteem and the teenager seeing a
future for themselves.

"You don't see many honours students in young offender centres," he said.

Chuvalo said starting to smoke, despite all the information people now have
about smoking, is a sign a teenager doesn't respect themselves.

"If the same labels were on cans of soup (that are on cigarette packages),
who in their right mind would drink a can of soup? Yet young people smoke
cigarettes," he said.

Chuvalo said when a teenager smokes for the first time it shows disrespect
for themselves and makes it easier to disrespect themselves again. He said
it makes it easier to drink alcohol or smoke pot and then to graduate to
taking pills and harder drugs. "The next step is crack or coke or heroin,"
he said.

Chuvalo said George Lee and Steven took heroin because they weren't afraid
of what it would do to them, but that if they could have seen that it would
lead them to rob drug stores, spend time in jail and ultimately kill them,
they probably wouldn't have done it. "But they couldn't see the future," he
said. "If my sons could see the future they wouldn't have done drugs."

Chuvalo said there's nothing glamourous about being a drug addict, despite
how they're sometimes depicted in Hollywood. Chuvalo said heroin addicts
don't look like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, but more like Keith Richards.
He said Hollywood often paints an erroneous picture of what drug addiction
is like.

"They didn't show him naked except for an orange T-shirt, shaking and
sweating over the toilet bowl begging for drugs like George Lee," he said.

Chuvalo said young people today have to be smarter and keenly aware of the
decision they are making.

"Stay in school, be smart, become somebody, you can't do it being a drug
addict," he said.

Chuvalo said love is the answer to helping young people make the right
decisions. After his wife's death, he spent six weeks in bed, not able to
come to grips with what had happened. It was family and friends visiting him
and showing him how much he was loved that finally motivated him to go on
with his life.

"If you have love in your lives you will always make the right decision," he
said.

He said when children are loved and happy it's easier for them to make the
right decisions, like going to church, taking care of their bodies and
working hard in school.

"Love your family, love yourself, respect yourselves and your family and you
will be happier," he said, closing his presentation.