WALLA WALLA - Most of the crowd had settled into the metal bleachers or stood along the chicken-wire fence that surrounds the field at Borleske Stadium.
Kickoff was barely five minutes away, and as the Walla Walla Warriors walked from their locker room toward their sideline, nobody
could find Toalei Mulitauaopele.
Assistant coach Randy Jones was concerned. "Have you seen him?" he asked Campbell Alefaio, Mulitauaopele's teammate and good friend.
"Last time I saw him, he was in the locker room," Alefaio replied.
Seconds later, Mulitauaopele appeared in the corner of the far end zone. His 6-foot-7, 325-pound frame was unmistakable. He jogged slowly across the field. His shoulder pads barely covered his muscled torso, and beads of sweat ran down his face and smeared the black paint beneath his eyes.
"He said he had to finish praying," Jones said.
No one in the small, cramped Pierce County Superior courtroom wanted to be there, least of all Toalei Mulitauaopele (pronounced TOE-lay Mooly-tawa-oh-PAY-lay), who passed the time tracing his index finger along the grooves in the wooden table and breaking occasionally for muted conversations with his attorney, Sheri Arnold.
He could hear the sobs that filled the room from behind him. Everyone cried - his Cleveland High School football coach, Hoover Hopkins; his friends who skipped school to be there, and his family, which had been at every hearing.
Across the room, tears of a different kind were shed by family members of Ramon Garcia. Mulitauaopele's involvement in the slayings of Garcia and another man had brought him to the courtroom.
The room quieted when Judge Arthur Verehan entered.
Weeks before, the prospects of Mulitauaopele facing the death penalty were very real, but as the facts were revealed, Pierce County prosecutor Carl Hultman became convinced that Mulitauaopele had played a minor role in the killings.
He allowed Mulitauaopele to plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter and recommended that he serve 41 months. Arnold asked for 18 months.
Sensing his son could be home within a year because he'd already been held nearly seven months since his arrest, Toaale Mulitauaopele rocked nervously on the wooden bench.
Verehan, though, surprised everyone, delivering the maximum sentence, 54 months. The room erupted in sobs of anquish.
As guards led Mulitauaopele out of the courtroom in shackles at the wrists and ankles, his father rushed to his side and whispered in his ear.
"You promised your mother that you would go to college and play football," Toaale said. "Don't forget your promise."
Knowing that his mother, Risepa, had died from pancreatic cancer while Mulitauaopele was in custody and how close the two had been, perhaps it is easy to understand why he now attends a community college in Walla Walla, the same small Eastern Washington town where he spent six months at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Maybe it explains why Toaale wrote to his youngest son three times a week while Toalei was in prison, urging him not to lose hope. And why the father pestered Walla Walla coaches with phone calls and letters, urging them to give his son a chance.
Maybe it all makes sense when Mulitauaopele's sister Naomi, a straight-A student and standout basketball player at Stanford, says her older brother is her hero.
And maybe it is easier to understand why he was late for the start of a football game.
"He was praying to his mother," his father said. "He made a promise to her. He won't forget it."
That same thought ran through Mulitauaopele's head last week, after saying he had orally committed to attend Washington on a football scholarship, starting next year. Before the scholarship will be offered formally, he must get his associate's degree from Walla Walla.
"The last time I saw my mom, she was in the hospital and she wanted me to promise her that I would fulfill my dreams and give it an honest go," Mulitauaopele said. "I said, `Mom, I want to play football.'
"She didn't care what I chose, she just wanted me to give it my best. I could have said accounting and it wouldn't have mattered to her."
Washington is recruiting a 308-pound lineman from Federal Way, a California running back who can vertically leap 42 inches, and a Hawaiian linebacker able to bench press nearly 350 pounds.
No one will attract as much attention and debate as Mulitauaopele, 21, because of his tremendous size and checkered background.
"Whoever takes a chance on me, does just that, takes a chance on me," he said. "I know that, but it's not like some big gamble. If you want to know me, talk to me. I'll tell you anything you want to know."
And he did.
He spoke candidly, about the manslaughter conviction, his affiliation with Seattle gangs, his close-knit family, the death of his mother, his father, who is a Samoan pastor, and the possibility that next year he will play Division I college football.
He plans to major in architectural design and hopes to talk to underprivileged youths about his life.
"Before I got in trouble, I always lived in the projects," Mulitauaopele said. "We weren't poor, but we weren't rich either. The word `future' didn't have any meaning to me. I'd seen people die left and right every day.
"I wasn't even living, I was surviving, trying not to be a statistic. I'd been to more funerals than I'd been to movies. Ain't that a trip? I was 16 and I'd been to more funerals then I'd been to parties. That's not right."
Washington was one of five schools serious about Mulitauaopele. The others were Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Arizona.
Since being released on May 18, 1995, after a little more than three years in prison, he has played football at Walla Walla Community College the past two seasons.
He ended a four-year hiatus from football and was named a JC All-America last season after playing only four games at defensive tackle. That season ended abruptly when he suffered severed tendons in his forearm after breaking a locker-room window.
Walla Walla finished the 1996 season with a 5-4 record, and Mulitauaopele was clearly its best player.
Jones, who at Walla Walla has coached two players now in the NFL, said Mulitauaopele has the talent to succeed in Division I.
"He has more ability in one arm than those guys in the pros right now," Jones said.
"Those few years in jail took away his fundamentals. He played nine games this year, four last year. That's 13 games in five years and that speaks for itself."
Despite constant double- and triple-teaming, Mulitauaopele dominated because he was bigger and stronger than anyone else.
Mulitauaopele's talent and skills, however, are not the only questions raised in his recruitment. There is the moral/ethical issue to consider.
Should Washington give a scholarship to a convicted felon?
"We did," said Jones, who also works as a corrections officer at the Washington State Penitentiary. "We had a chance to help a young man. That's what we're here for. We're all in this to help people, right?
"We talked about this as a coaching staff. The president was involved, so was the community. We talked a lot about the idea of second chances. You either believe in them or you don't.
"Personally, I do. I have to, or else I'd feel as if my job isn't working. You commit a crime, you pay for it, you go on with your life. That's how the system works."
Other Division I schools have accepted athletes with criminal records. Routinely, football programs make national news because of players' criminal involvement.
Washington State gambled last year on junior-college running back Michael Black, who was convicted of armed robbery as a juvenile.
Washington usually shies away from troubled athletes. Former Husky receiver Marc Jones, who served a year's sentence after punching a man and blinding him, was the last player the Huskies recruited with a criminal record. He was kicked off the team in 1990 after one season.
The Huskies usually recruit prep athletes. They broke from the norm last year when they landed Corey Dillon out of junior college.
An academically at-risk student, Dillon's past never included felonies, but as a juvenile he was arrested for selling narcotics.
Washington took a chance on him, and so far, the risk has paid off. Dillon has stayed out of trouble and set a school record for yards rushing.
"We had our concerns - I know I did - but Corey has done everything to quiet anyone's fears," Washington Coach Jim Lambright said. "He's great on the field, but off the field he's even better. . . . His humbleness has won over many people."
NCAA rules prohibit Washington coaches and officials from speaking specifically about Mulitauaopele.
Still, Athletic Director Barbara Hedges said that extra scrutiny is taken when recruiting athletes with police records.
"We screen every athlete . . . and if his/her background warrants it, we search even more," Hedges said. "We ask a lot of questions. We try to talk to everybody that's directly involved with the athlete.
"We might not get all the answers, but we want to know enough to make a good decision."
When investigating Mulitauaopele's background, Washington officials probably won't speak with the families of Ramon Garcia and Benito Aguayo.
Perhaps they should.
"I think he deserves a second chance," said Cheryl Garcia, Ramon's sister-in-law. "It's not for me to judge him. I don't think he had prior knowledge of what was going to happen, and he paid for his part."
Others disagree.
"In many ways, it's very unfair," prosecutor Hultman said. "The tragedy is that people were killed. The fact that one of the people involved has a chance to go on with his life is fine, but the families of those people will never spend another moment with the people they lost.
"Does this guy deserve all of this? I don't know. You hope he takes advantage of it. You hope that they (Garcia and Aguayo) are constantly on his mind.
"The fact that he can even walk and breathe makes him lucky. Everyone else involved that night aren't as lucky as he is."
Six people spent at least two terrible hours inside a modest-size Tacoma apartment; two are dead, three remain in prison and only Mulitauaopele is free.
"As I look back on all of that, it's like a bad dream," Mulitauaopele said. "It haunts me. I'll never leave it. Never forget it. It's like, I can see everything that happened, but it's kind of hazy at the same time.
"It's like that wasn't really me. I think about it and I see me, but I don't recognize that person anymore. . . . People say they've changed all the time, but I'll say it and believe it. I've changed."
On Oct. 23, 1991, Mulitauaopele drove to Tacoma with Uimaiama Lausiva, a friend. Lausiva had been engaged to Mulitauaopele's older sister, Darlene, and was the father of her unborn baby. He also was a son of a good friend of Toalei's father.
Mulitauaopele trusted him and drove Lausiva's 1977 white Caprice to a Fife convenience store, where they picked up Hans Hale and Kathleen Aynes.
They made another quick stop at Hale's apartment, where Hale picked up a shotgun, then drove to Aguayo's apartment.
They broke a window on the door and walked in. While waiting for Aguayo, a reputed narcotics dealer, Hale and Aynes told Mulitauaopele and Lausiva of their plan to steal drugs and money.
They gave Lausiva a .14-caliber gun and Mulitauaopele a .38-caliber pistol. Hale carried the shotgun.
When Aguayo arrived with Garcia, a friend and former co-worker, they were bound with duct tape and gagged by Hale, Lausiva and Mulitauaopele.
In police statements, Tacoma Police said that Garcia "was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Lausiva told Mulitauaopele to get the parked car and drive it to a nearby alley. When Mulitauaopele left, Garcia and Aguayo were alive.
Lausiva then hit Garcia several times with a bar stool and demanded to know where the money and drugs were. Garcia said he didn't know.
Seconds later, Hale cut Garcia's throat with a kitchen knife.
They turned to Aguayo, who said he didn't have any money or drugs.
The assailants left the apartment, and as Hale walked out the door, he turned and shot Aguayo in the back of the head.
The shotgun blast pierced the stillness of the dark. The three scurried from the apartment and into the parked car. Mulitauaopele had moved to the back seat.
Lausiva got behind the wheel. He drove fast, running traffic lights. He dropped off Aynes and Hale.
Mulitauaopele sensed something was wrong, but he was 16, the youngest in the group, and didn't ask any questions. His heart was racing.
Mulitauaopele returned to his life and tried to forget that night. He was a budding football star at Seattle's Cleveland High and a member of the choir at his father's church.
Five months later, Seattle Police asked Mulitauaopele to come to the station for questioning about the deaths of two Tacoma men.
He arrived wearing a baseball cap with the words "Mr. Benz Lok" and told police that was his street name and admitted being involved in a gang for the past year.
The previous week, police arrested Hale and Aynes, who confessed to the slayings and Lausiva was brought in.
Police matched Mulitauaopele's fingerprints to those inside the apartment. He confessed less than 24 hours after his arrest.
"I know people want me to say I'm sorry," Mulitauaopele said. "I'm sorry. I really am. My whole life changed because of one bad decision.
"Whatever decision I make today, whether to go to a party or go to class, it affects me in the long run. Back then, I didn't care. It was scary to think about what would happen to me in 10 years. Now I think about it all the time. I can't wait until 10 years from now."
Is Washington the right place for him to change his life again?
"What the judicial system seldom takes into account, and what we as adults ignore, is that in trying to solve any problem like this, it's not just critical to rehabilitate the kid, but it's the environment surrounding the kid as well," said Al Black, a sociology professor at the UW.
"If you are a gang member and you decided to stop, but you killed one of the homeys in the past," someone's going to want a piece of you, Black said. "You may be totally convinced that you are not going to go back, but others may not.
"That can present problems, and you can't be naive about that."
Toaale realizes the risks, but he wants his son home.
"Washington is the best place for him," the father said. "He needs to be around his family. He needs to be home."
