Pubdate: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 Source: Charlotte Observer (NC) Copyright: 1999 The Charlotte Observer Contact: http://www.charlotte.com/observer/ Author: Gregg Doyel, Raleigh Bureau SHELTER OF PRISON LETS WHITNEY BREAK FROM LIFE OF DRUG ABUSE ASHLAND, Ky. - That's where he turned 42. Back there, behind the heavy door that buzzes a warning before it opens, down the long hallway where footsteps echo and die, behind the bars. . . . Charles Vincent "Hawkeye" Whitney turned 42 two months ago. He had no birthday party, no cake. He had no visitors. Of course, he never has visitors. So Whitney began June 22, 1999, as he begins every day in prison -- awake at 5:30 a.m., no alarm clock needed, thank you, then 30 glorious minutes alone with the Bible before breakfast. Whitney doesn't read the Bible because he has questions. He knows why he is here, locked up in a small town just west of West Virginia, serving 69 months for the armed kidnapping of a White House lawyer almost four years ago in Washington. He is here because of the drugs. He lost everything to crack. His basketball career. His wife. His second wife. His home. Whitney has two sons, but he hasn't seen the older one in almost 20 years, and he's pretty sure the boy doesn't know his old man is in prison. Whitney, who finished his career at N.C. State in 1980 as the No. 3 scorer in school history with 1,964 points, was the 16th overall pick in the 1980 NBA draft by the Kansas City Kings. He was a burly 6-foot-5 forward, and his first NBA contract was for two years and $220,000. Before the second year was finished, he was smoking crack in condemned buildings, sleeping in abandoned cars. No, Hawkeye Whitney doesn't read the Bible for answers. He reads the Bible because it fills a hole in his heart, a hole gouged out by 15 years of cocaine abuse. "The book of Job, that's something," Whitney says, his voice quiet, his eyes looking around the almost empty visiting room of the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland. "Job had it all, but he lost everything he had. Me and Job, we have some things in common." From hero to zero Hawkeye Whitney began drinking beer and smoking marijuana as an N.C. State freshman in 1977, when he won ACC Rookie of the Year. As a junior, Whitney was first team All-ACC and was taking methamphetamines before games. He remembers popping a capsule of speed a few hours before the 1979 ACC tournament semifinals, then outscoring Duke All-American Gene Banks, 18 points to three. N.C. State lost that game, but Whitney made second-team all-tournament. As a senior, he discovered cocaine. He says it happened at a party off-campus, in a back room. Come in here, Hawkeye. Try some. "In high school, I never did drugs, I never drank. That was my edge," Whitney says. "I saw how other players partied, and while they were doing their thing, I was in the gym. I got to college, and I thought I was an adult, but I was just a teen-ager, a kid. It was like a kid being set loose in a candy store. `Here I am!' " Whitney says he never did drugs in front of teammates, and as far as he knows, nobody at N.C. State knew. (Teammate Chuck Nevitt confirms this, saying he never heard a word that Whitney was using drugs.) If the drugs affected his play on the court, it was merely a fingerprint on a new Corvette; Hawkeye was still a beautiful site to behold. "He kicked our behind," says N.C. State athletics director Les Robinson, who coached The Citadel in 1980 during a 57-35 loss to Whitney and the Wolfpack. "Hawkeye was like (former Duke star) Grant Hill -- give me five Grant Hills, or five Hawkeye Whitneys, and you can win the national championship. He can dribble, play inside, do anything you need. A team of five Hawkeyes wouldn't have a point guard or a center, but it would be a team I wouldn't want to coach against." Whitney was Kansas City's sixth man as a rookie, averaging 7.4 points through 47 games, when he went in for a dunk against Milwaukee and clipped Sidney Moncrief's shoulder on the way down. Whitney landed badly, tearing up his right knee, essentially ending his career. He would play only 23 games the following season, and average 2.3 points. By the time he fell while dunking on Moncrief, Whitney says, he was inhaling cocaine daily. A short time later, Whitney says, he was visiting a friend and met a man who pulled out a bowl, a butane lighter and a rock of cocaine. Whitney had just discovered crack. Without the boundaries provided by basketball, Whitney began to spiral downward, out of control. Smoking crack throughout the day, every day, he lost his apartment, his first wife, his dignity. He trafficked drugs to get his crack, standing on street corners and serving as a go-between for people who wanted a drug but didn't know where to get it. Whitney knew where. He went years without touching a ball, and his weight, about 220 pounds in college, ballooned to 350. "I drank a lot of beer," Whitney says. "I ate, but it wasn't good." He was homeless in the early 1980s, first in Kansas City, then in Durham in the early 1990s after a short second attempt at marriage and an even shorter attempt at returning to N.C. State to finish his degree. In 1993, he moved home to Washington, D.C., where he had been a high school All-American at DeMatha. He landed on the streets again, harder than ever. "I thought I was at my lowest in Kansas City," Whitney says, a sad smile on his face. "Then I went home and God ripped the rug right out from under me." A bizarre case Were the facts of the case not so unusual, Hawkeye Whitney might have suffered his greatest indignation in private. A homeless addict committing robbery in Washington? Sad, but not news. The robber was some fellow named Charles Whitney? All right, but who's that? Because of the bizarre facts, though, Charles Whitney, drug abuser, was unmasked as Hawkeye Whitney, former basketball star. "I've been doing this for 21, 22 years, and I've never seen anything like it," says Detective Joe Morrash, the lead investigator on the case for the Alexandria, Va., police department. "And I'll probably never see it again. When we first got the case, the story was so unbelievable, we didn't think it was true." True story: Hawkeye Whitney had the misfortune of robbing not just a White House lawyer, but Mark Fabiani, a player in the front-page Whitewater serial, the point man for media inquiries of Hillary Rodham Clinton during the hearings. Fabiani knew almost every connected reporter in town. It wasn't just the victim. It was the crime itself, a mugging done with a heartbreaking level of humanity. According to court documents, Whitney and a juvenile accomplice confronted Fabiani at gunpoint at an ATM, drove him to two other ATMs and forced him to withdraw about $1,600. Whitney then talked his gun-wielding accomplice into driving Fabiani to a nearby hospital. There, Whitney returned Fabiani's cellular phone, briefcase and Rolex. He also gave Fabiani $10 for cab fare. "It's just amazing, the story," Morrash says. "In that part of town, to have two thugs mug you for drug money, then give you back $10 for cab fare, it's unheard of." At Whitney's pretrial hearing, Fabiani expressed sympathy for Whitney's addiction. "(Fabiani) wasn't vindictive at all," says Neil Jaffee, Whitney's public defender. "Just the opposite. He told me he hoped Hawkeye would be able to get the help he obviously needed." Contacted last week by The Observer at his home in La Jolla, Calif., Fabiani declined to answer questions about the case. He did, though, chuckle with what sounded something like friendly recognition when he learned the topic was Hawkeye Whitney. "Oh, yes," Fabiani said. "I remember Hawkeye. How is he, anyway?" Morrash understands why Fabiani might feel something other than malice for the man who robbed him. "If not for Whitney, (Fabiani) might have been killed by the juvenile," Morrash says. "Whitney was just along for the ride with this kid, who was a suspect in a number of similar crimes in that area. The kid wasn't being led by the adult. It was the other way around. "At some point, the kid said, `Let's do him.' But Whitney talked him out of it, gave the guy cab fare, and even took him to a safe place to call the cab. If they had just left (Fabiani) there, in that neighborhood, he probably would have been mugged again. It's only my opinion, but I think if it weren't for Whitney, Mr. Fabiani would have been seriously hurt, or killed, that night." If Morrash is right, wouldn't that be something? Hawkeye Whitney went along with a robbery, and saved the victim's life. There's more, you know. And it truly is something. Hawkeye Whitney robbed someone -- and it saved his soul. Life in prison Ashland, Ky., is a two-exit town off Interstate 64, hard by the West Virginia line. The first exit, two miles across the state line, overlooks a monstrous oil refinery -- acres of smokestacks blowing black haze. Just off the second exit is the federal prison, which comes after a wave of hotels. The hotel marquees closest to the interstate boast of fitness rooms and free HBO. The hotel marquee closest to the prison advertises "dependable safes." The prison is huge and separated from the Ashland citizenry by miles of 12-foot chain-link fence. From a distance, the coils of wire atop the fence look harmless, like rows of shiny new hubcaps. Closer, they look deadly. They look like what they are -- circle after circle of steel razor blades. Inside the fences are rows of red-brick buildings that in another setting could have been college dormitories, except for the black steel barring the windows. That, and the 30-foot guard towers outside the fences, one at every corner of the facility. As the sun sets one evening in late July, the outside of the prison is quiet, nothing moving except for a white pickup truck making slow rectangles around the prison, its lights off, a guard behind the wheel. Hawkeye Whitney lives here. It beats the streets, where death waited. "I'd be dead right now," says Whitney, who had no criminal record before the robbery of Fabiani. "No question about it. I'd be just another dead addict if I hadn't gotten arrested. God works in amazing ways. While I am truly sorry for (Fabiani) and what I put his family through, I am grateful it happened because it saved my life." For three weeks after the robbery, Whitney was a fugitive. An ATM video captured his image, and local television stations broadcast it. Whitney saw it while visiting a friend. A tipster saw it, too. "We were told, `That's Hawk,' " Morrash says. "We have a sergeant who followed Whitney's career back from his high school days, and he was going, `Oh, man, that's one of the best players this city ever saw.' " That sergeant cruised southeast D.C. and spotted Whitney. When the police car stopped, Morrash says, Whitney surrendered and climbed in back, then confessed. He later pleaded guilty to armed kidnapping and was sentenced to 69 months in prison. Whitney says it saved his life, and his afterlife, when he robbed Fabiani. "I wasn't no robber. I wasn't no thief," Whitney says. "I was an addict, that's what I was, and I got myself in some trouble because of it. But I was happy to get into that police car, because I knew it was over. That was the exact moment I gave my life to the Lord. I live every day for him and there's a peace that's better than any high in the world. "I've been clean ever since. You can get stuff in here. That's no problem. But I'm not going to play with it any more, because I know if I ever use again, I surely will die." A roof over his head A man can die in prison, with or without the junk. Whitney knows. After his arrest he was held briefly at a maximum-security facility in Lawton, Va., where he says inmates robbed, stabbed and raped other inmates. Whitney made friends with one guy who could make him laugh. A few years later, Whitney heard, that funny fellow strung up a sheet in his cell and hung himself. This place, Ashland, is a little different, though precautions still are taken. One rule: no bleach allowed. "Bleach is pretty versatile," Whitney explains. "You can throw it in someone's eyes, or you can poison someone with it. "This place isn't like some prisons you've heard about, but don't think it's not dangerous in here. You relax for one minute here, and you can get hurt. Me, I fear no man. I get in arguments every now and then, but I have one rule, and (other inmates) understand: Say what you want, but don't ever put your hands on me." Despite the razor wire and guard shacks, Ashland is at the lower end of medium-security federal institutions. Whitney walks around in khaki pants and an anonymous gray sweatshirt. His socks and shoes are bright white, perhaps brand new, for this late-July interview -- his first visitor at Ashland. Whitney comes and goes without handcuffs, a giant of a man at 6-5 and 300 pounds. He was up to 360 pounds last year, a few months after tearing up his good (left) knee in what may have been the last pickup game of his life. "Can't move any more," he says. "But I never lose in H-O-R-S-E. I can still shoot. If I take 10 free throws, I'm going to hit 10 free throws." Whitney is in charge of the prison gym, keeping it clean and running the four-on-four Blacktop Basketball League. For all this, the prison pays him $17 a month, which doesn't cover the toothpaste, deodorant and shaving supplies he buys in the prison commissary. "It may sound crazy," Whitney says, "but I like it here. People talk about the food, but it's better than what I was eating on the streets. Sure it's not the roof I want over my head, but it is a roof. They treat me like a person. I'm not complaining about being here." A model prisoner, from all indications. "He's always smiling and happy," says prison guard Beverly Sharpe, who oversees Unit D, the community within the community where Whitney lives. "This isn't fake, what you're seeing here. He's always in a good mood." Life on the outside One day, he will be returned to society. Whitney doesn't know what awaits him on the outside, most of all when it comes to crack. Turning it down in prison is one thing. Turning it down on the streets, where no one is watching too closely, is another matter. "It will be the biggest challenge of my life," Whitney says, looking ahead to his release. "I'll never have it licked. I'm a recovering addict, and I will be for the rest of my life. I'm just grateful I have this chance to get it right. A lot of people die on the streets." Possible career opportunities? Whitney isn't sure, but he'd like to do anti-drug motivational speaking, particularly geared toward college athletes and younger kids. He'd like to have his own basketball camp for at-risk kids and preach the evils of drugs against the virtues of God. Maybe coach a little? Whitney isn't sure. He has time to figure it out. Meantime, he has rebuilt some battered relationships. Legendary DeMatha coach Morgan Wootten, who coached Whitney 25 years ago, gave him work at his summer camp in the early 1990s, but Whitney was undependable, still on crack, and eventually disappeared. Today, Whitney and Wootten write two or three times a month. When Whitney gets out, he says he will move to Maryland to be close to Wootten. "I look at Hawkeye as my son, and any way I can help him I would," Wootten says. "He knows I'm here if he needs me. I believe Hawkeye will beat this in every way." Whitney also talks regularly with former Kansas City Kings teammate Phil Ford, an assistant coach at North Carolina; UNC assistant athletics director John Lotz, who recruited Whitney in 1976 as the coach at Florida; and Mike Brey, the former Duke assistant and current Delaware coach who was point guard on Whitney's teams at DeMatha. Somewhere, Whitney hopes, a job will materialize when he gets out. Just when that is, he won't say. "I want to surprise some people," he says. According to prison officials, Whitney's release is set for March 2001. Whitney has other ideas. "I turn 43 in June (2000)," he says. "I want to be out of here by then." Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney helped keep N.C. State basketball on the map for four seasons. After being named ACC freshman of the year in 1977, he was named second-team All-ACC in 1978. He earned first-team honors in 1979 and 1980. The 6-foot-5 forward averaged 16.8 points per game in his career and still ranks among the Wolfpack's top-five in scoring, field goals and steals. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D