after the ceremony, everyone left and headed to my mom's house for the party reception, which was news to me and my mom! Johnny and his friends, however, knew all about it and couldn't wait to get into the cases of beer.
We show up at my mom's house and I wasn't feeling well. I had a bad cold, felt feverish, had a cough and sore throat. I wasn't in the party spirit. All I wanted to do was relax, but instead I was sitting there watching Johnny run around with tons of people in the house. What I didn't realize was that Johnny had already been on a binge all week. Not an alcohol binge though.
Next thing, Johnny disappeared, and one of his friends said, “Do you know what you've married?”
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Go to the bathroom and take a peek at what you've married.”
I walked to the bathroom and when I opened the door, Johnny was in there with another guy, who had a needle in Johnny's arm. I was blown away. I had never, ever witnessed that kind of drug abuse. Johnny slammed the door on me and locked it, but I kicked it down. By this stage it was too late. He'd already shot up. I was shouting at him, “Oh my God! How could you do this? Why are you doing this?” He was oblivious though as he was now high. He just walked out of the bathroom, straight past me as if I wasn't there, and partied some more. I felt mad, betrayed, upset, disgusted, and devastated.
Before I could even let that shock set in, suddenly there were police everywhere. Johnny was fighting in the street against someone and the police were going to arrest him. My mom is the one who saved him. She explained that we'd just got married and that I'd be responsible for him. You have to remember that the police at this time were not fans of Johnny because he came with a bad reputation—one I wasn't fully acquainted with.
The police let Johnny go on the condition that he left the house straightaway. So we got our luggage, put it in the car, and told everyone goodbye. Johnny was upset, as he didn't want to leave the party. The police made me drive as he sat next to me in the passenger seat, high and drunk. When we got a few blocks away, he had me stop the car, jumped over, and got into the driver's seat.
Friends of the family had given Johnny and me a really nice suite for our honeymoon at one of the best hotels in The Heights, which would normally go for a thousand dollars a night. I noticed we weren't going in the direction of the hotel and asked, “What are you doing? Where are we going?”
Johnny said, “I don't want to go there.” Instead, he drove us to this dumpy fleabag motel called “The French Quarters,” which was known for drug use and prostitution.
We got there, walked through the door, and in under a couple of minutes he said, “I need to make a phone call.”
“There's a phone right here in the room,” I replied.
“No, I need to use a pay phone,” Johnny said. “I'll be right back.”
What I didn't realize was that he took my car keys and the wedding money, which was approximately $500. No Johnny, no car, and no money. I was ashamed and embarrassed. I didn't know what to say to people and felt very alone. I was sitting in that room thinking, “What the hell am I going to do now?”
I called my mom just so someone knew where I was. “Change of plans, mom. We didn't go to the Sheraton hotel, we're at this motel.” She asked why. “Oh. It was closer,” I lied. I was too embarrassed to explain. I spent that night alone, scared, and put furniture up against the hotel room door.
The next morning, before 7 a.m., there's banging at the door and I thought, “It's Johnny!” I ran to the door and opened it, but it was my mom standing there crying.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
She wouldn't stop hugging me and kept saying, “Thank God you're OK.”
I asked again, “What's wrong?”
She had her car parked outside and said, “Get your stuff. We've gotta go.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The hospital.”
“Why?”
“Somebody called. Johnny's passed away. They found him dead in your car and was pronounced DOA [dead on arrival] at a fire station in the South Valley. He was then taken to UNM [University of New Mexico] hospital. You need to go to identify his body.”
As we walked into the hospital, my head was all over the place. All of a sudden I heard screaming and yelling, and in a flash I saw Johnny run right past me. I was looking at him in this hospital gown, and his butt cheeks were showing because he didn't have underwear on. He didn't even notice me as he ran past, and I looked at my mom and said, “Is this a sick joke?” In the meantime, hospital staff, security, and police were chasing Johnny. I was standing there with my mouth open.
My mom and I left, and as we were driving up a busy road I saw somebody running. It was Johnny. We pulled over beside him and he jumped in the car and said, like we've just done a bank job, “Let's go, let's go!” We drove to my grandma's house and as soon as we got in, he fell asleep like the dead for two days.
That was my first twenty-four hours as Mrs. Johnny Tapia.
Teresa Tapia
Chapter 1
Baptism of Hell
“Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.”
—Joe Frazier
Albuquerque, New Mexico, is geographically situated in a bygone era of gunslingers and fast drinkers. The Wild West, from 1865 to 1895, ingrained itself in America's folklore, and when John Lee Tapia was born there on February 13, 1967, it's as if he picked up the baton, ran with it, and left a trail of smoke behind him that immortalized Mi Vida Loca.
Was Johnny Tapia boxing's most tortured soul? Arguably. Known by boxing aficionados as a colorful multiweight world champion, Johnny stared death in the face more times than would seem physically possible.
As a seven-year-old boy, he was given his first taste of how quickly the circle of life can end for an individual at any given moment. While on a bus as part of a school field trip, Johnny was sitting next to a woman named Concha, who was heavily pregnant. The bus hit a rock while going down a mountain road, went off a cliff, and Johnny flew straight down the bus and cracked his head open, lying there barely conscious. Concha was also propelled out of her seat, through the bus window, but was then jammed between the bus and the tree. Her blood was literally dripping on Johnny as she died in front of his eyes.
This, however, was not the episode that would affect Johnny's mental health for the rest of his life. The day his mother Virginia gave birth to him, he was already absorbing second-degree shock: His father was murdered when his mother was pregnant with him. But it was a horrific episode that took place eight years later that was the beginning of the end for Albuquerque's most decorated boxer and New Mexico's most infamous athlete.
On May 24, 1975, an uncharacteristically tearful Johnny was taken to his grandparents’ house while his mother
