A boxer, a kind man, his life ends on street

CHRISTIAN HILL; Staff writer Staff writer

Francisco Roche-Cruz's life of hard knocks ended on a rainy afternoon in December when he was struck by a car in downtown Olympia.

Roche-Cruz, 52, arrived in the United States in 1980 as a Cuban exile aboard the Freedom Flotilla and ascended to become a Northwest welterweight boxing champion, using raw talent and skills honed in the streets of Havana and inside a Cuban prison.

“Boxing is a religion over there,” said Noe Ramirez, a former professional boxer who trained with Roche-Cruz under the same manager in Seattle. “He had a lot of tactics, a lot of skills.”

But after his career ended, untreated mental illness, alcoholism and drug addiction took their toll, and Roche-Cruz spent the last decade of his life as a transient in downtown Olympia.

Like other homeless people, his was a face that many saw but few remembered.

Those who did befriend Roche-Cruz recall a kind man who loved music and greeted people warmly and with a smile.

“He touched a lot of people’s lives,” said Rob Richards, a former director of the Bread And Roses Advocacy Center who tried to help Roche-Cruz.

The flip side emerged when Roche-Cruz was drunk or high. Olympia police officer Robert Beckwell, who got to know Roche-Cruz while assigned to the downtown patrol in the late 1990s, said Roche-Cruz was arrested numerous times for nuisance complaints: urinating in public, drug possession and indecent exposure.

“He wasn’t welcome in a lot of places in downtown because of his behavior,” Beckwell said.

Roche-Cruz was known as a fighter who showed no fear and never backed away from anyone. That was an attribute in the boxing ring, but it became a detriment for those who tried to help rehabilitate him.

“He had trouble with authority and being told that he had to do this and follow these rules,” Richards said. “He would really resist that.”

A cycle repeated that illustrates key challenges in helping the chronically homeless with mental illness and drug and alcohol problems. Roche-Cruz would get arrested, find help and start down the right path – and then a trigger would send him back to substance abuse.

Roche-Cruz’s final cycle ended about 5 p.m. Dec. 19 when he was struck by a Jeep heading south on Plum Street. Witnesses said he ran into the street. The investigation is ongoing; police said no charges are expected to be filed against the unidentified driver. The investigating officer was on vacation last week and unavailable for comment.

Roche-Cruz’s body was unclaimed, so he was buried Feb. 18 at public expense at Forest Memorial Gardens cemetery on Pacific Avenue, not far from where he spent the bulk of the last years of his life.

DIFFICULT BEGINNINGS

Roche-Cruz was born Oct. 4, 1957, in Havana. More than a year later, Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba with the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

Roche-Cruz’s life was hard from the start. Wesley Guerin, an Olympia resident whose sister is divorced from Roche-Cruz’s brother, said Roche-Cruz boxed to raise money for his family.

In interviews, two stories emerge about why Roche-Cruz left Cuba. In the first, repeated by Guerin and Roche-Cruz’s nephew who lives in Tumwater, Roche-Cruz’s brother Lionel witnessed his abusive stepfather beating his mother and killed him. They said it’s unclear whether Roche-Cruz was involved.

“It was leave the country or face life in prison,” Guerin said.

Acquaintances of Roche-Cruz during his boxing career repeat the story told by Joe Toro, Roche-Cruz’s former trainer who since has died, in a 1983 newspaper article about an upcoming title bout.

Toro told The Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore., that Francisco, a teenager at the time, and his mother were returning from the store when she accidentally stepped on a pimp’s foot. The pimp grabbed her and instructed her to get on her knees and wipe his shoes.

Her son exploded in fury.

“Roche-Cruz punched the guy and knocked him out and then ran up the stairs and got a machete, came down and cut off both hands at the wrist,” Toro told the newspaper.

He was sent to prison.

Either story has Roche-Cruz arriving in the United States on the historic flotilla, also known as the Mariel boatlift, in which the Cuban government allowed 125,000 citizens to leave in an effort to ease internal tensions resulting from an economic downturn in the communist nation. The exiles included political refugees, mental patients and prisoners.

FROM MIAMI TO WASHINGTON

Roche-Cruz was held in police custody in Miami, Wisconsin, Arkansas and New Jersey before being released to his brother, who was living in Seattle, according to the article.

Joe Toro, who died at 73 in April 1990 of a heart attack, became Roche-Cruz’s trainer in 1981. Bob Jarvis, a former boxing promoter, said Roche-Cruz was living in downtown Seattle and likely walked into Toro’s gym, the Seattle Eagles Boxing Club.

Jarvis, a former heavyweight fighter, said Toro liked to promote talented fighters to the professional ranks quickly. One of Roche-Cruz’s first tests was an amateur bout with Greg Haugen arranged by the promoter. Haugen later would become the American boxing champion in two weight classes.

There was plenty of bad-mouthing before the fight, and their mutual dislike was on full display during the fight, which Haugen won by decision.

“These guys went at it tooth and nail,” said Jarvis, who described Roche-Cruz as a tough fighter with a good heart.

He added in a later interview: “It was a close fight. … You could see Roche could fight.”

Willamette Week of Portland characterized Roche-Cruz as “volatile … and has the same brand of sportsmanship as a bobcat in a henhouse” while describing the fight Aug. 26, 1982, when Roche-Cruz won the welterweight title against Darryl Penn, whom Jarvis described as a “very respectable welterweight.”

Ramirez, the former sparring partner who also was managed by Toro, recalled a painful lesson in the attitude Roche-Cruz brought to the ring. During a sparring session, instead of pillowy training gloves, Roche-Cruz wore leather gloves filled with horsehair that, Ramirez found out too late, pack quite a wallop.

“He caught me good,” said Ramirez, who said Roche-Cruz was known as the “crazy Cuban” because he would spontaneously begin singing in his native tongue.

Years later in Eugene, Roche-Cruz lost the title after being knocked out in the fifth round. He won his next fight by decision but lost his final three bouts.

He professional career ended in 1986; he had an 11-9-1 record with two knockouts, according to www.boxrec.com.

Ramirez said Roche-Cruz fell in with a bad crowd, and his conditioning suffered as a result. He recalled leaving his job in downtown Seattle late at night and seeing Roche-Cruz drinking with his new friends at various bars.

MOVE TO OLYMPIA

Roche-Cruz arrived in Olympia, where his brother was living, in the early 1990s. The former boxer – who, it appears, never held down a regular job – was on the streets dealing with his addiction and mental illnesses. He was known as Cisco.

Tristan Roche said his uncle was an alcoholic and crack cocaine addict.

The root of his mental illness and substance abuse is unclear. Guerin and Tristan Roche said it might be the result of brain damage from too many blows to the head. Another possibility is emotional trauma. Roche-Cruz told Richards, the advocate for the homeless, and Bary Hanson, the housing manager at Drexel House, that his wife and son were killed by a drunken driver in Seattle. Tristan Roche said he was told that Roche-Cruz’s son, who was in his early 20s, was killed during a drug deal gone bad several years ago. The Olympian was unable to verify either story.

“When his family died,” Hanson said, “that set the stage for the last half of his life.”

Hanson recalled that Roche-Cruz remarked once that the world was “an ugly place.” He remembered that Roche-Cruz loved reggae music, and that he never saw him without his earphone on. Hanson thought it was his way of escaping that perceived ugliness.

Efforts were made to get Roche-Cruz’s life together. He stayed at Drexel House, which provides shelter for the homeless, from 2007 to early 2009 and then was sent to jail, Hanson said.

After being released, Roche-Cruz would occasionally visit, Hanson said, but he never took to rehabilitation.

“He wasn’t into that at all,” he said.

Tristan Roche said his roommate saw Roche-Cruz smiling the night before his death.

There were two memorials for Roche-Cruz, one at Sylvester Park and the other at Drexel House, attended by friends and acquaintances who remembered his kindness.

No friends or family came to his burial. A priest performed a brief service while two funeral home employees watched.

Then the simple wooden box containing his remains slipped into the earth, this former boxing champion’s final fall to the mat.

Christian Hill: 360-754-5427

chill@theolympian.com

www.theolympian.com/outsideolympia