Pubdate: Wed, 05 Sep 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Steve Lopez
Page: 2

AN APOLOGY FOR CARTEL DEATHS

A Former Addict Makes Reparations to Grieving Mexican Mothers.

The redhaired man who stepped onto the Olvera Street bandstand looked 
vaguely familiar, but it was his words that got my attention. John 
Whitaker, a 52year-old Santa Clarita resident, was addressing a rally 
to raise awareness of cartel violence in Mexico, and he started off 
by apologizing to the Mexican mothers he'd just heard speak about 
losing children in the drug wars.

Whitaker, a recovering addict, said he now realized that his drug use 
had no doubt had consequences south of the border, where cartel 
violence has cost thousands of lives. Speaking in English and then 
translating his own words into Spanish, Whitaker told the Mexican 
visitors he was there to ask forgiveness "if any of the drugs I used 
had anything to do" with any of their family members or anyone else 
being killed or kidnapped.

Mexican supply and U.S. demand are two chapters of the same story, 
but I'd never heard anyone make the connection more dramatically than 
Whitaker, who heads the L.A. chapter of Parents for Addiction 
Treatment and Healing. When I introduced myself after his speech, I 
couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen him somewhere, and I found 
out why when I called later to set up an interview.

Many years ago, Whitaker was a child actor. One of his more memorable 
roles was on the TV series "Family Affair," in which actor Brian 
Keith was raising twins named Buffy and Jody with the help of a male 
nanny played by Sebastian Cabot.

"I was Jody," said Whitaker, 52, who started playing that role at age 6.

Several days after hearing him speak in the plaza, I drove to San 
Fernando to meet with Whitaker in his childhood home, where his 
mother still lives. His dad was a middle school teacher in Pacoima, 
he said, and his mother took care of John and seven siblings who were 
raised Mormon and sang in the same church attended by members of the 
Osmond family. In one performance, Whitaker, said, "I forgot the 
words to the second verse of" a song called "A Child of God." But he 
soldiered on, making up the words as he went.

Another congregant was impressed and introduced the Whitakers to a 
talent agency. Whitaker was soon doing TV commercials and helped 
avert world war in the movie "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians 
Are Coming" when he was rescued by a Russian sailor after dangling 
from a roof. Then came "Family Affair," followed by more work in TV 
and in Disney movies. But when he became a teenager, the job offers tailed off.

"Hollywood loves puppies," Whitaker said, "but it doesn't love 
puppies who become dogs."

In fact, Anissa Jones, who played Buffy in "Family Affair," never 
duplicated that success in later roles and died of a drug overdose in 1976.

Whitaker hadn't been close to her after the show, but was still 
jolted by her death. He went on to serve in Portugal on a Mormon 
mission, then returned home to a marriage that didn't last, and the 
breakup crushed him.

"I started on a downward spiral into alcohol and drug addiction" and 
rejected "God, the church, everything. Nothing had worked out the way 
I wanted it to," and after all that childhood fame - when much of his 
earnings helped pay his family's bills - he found himself working as 
a word processor and struggling to pay bills.

He did meth, cocaine and crack, venturing to drug corners on Alvarado 
Street after work or on weekends. He was a "full-on addict" the last 
several of his 12 years doing drugs. Then his family called him to an 
intervention, in the very room where he and I spoke, and threatened 
to "excommunicate me from the family."

Whitaker rebelled at first, denying he had a problem he couldn't 
handle. Then he went to rehab, and countless 12-step meetings, and 
not only did he end up clean, on Sept. 25, 1997, but he became a drug 
counselor, a job he's still doing.

One of the steps of his recovery, Whitaker said, "was to make 
reparations for the harms I caused." Although the worst of the drug 
violence in Mexico has happened since he's been sober, he won't give 
himself a break on that count.

"I believe I am an accomplice in the murder of some people. 
Absolutely," Whitaker said. "Sometime during that period of my using, 
especially when it was cocaine, I'm sure there are a few murdered 
people I am responsible for."

That's what brought him to the rally on Olvera Street, he said.

"One way I can make reparation is to meet with these families, and 
every time I heard a name - when a mother said this is my son 
Rudolfo, this is my son Enrique, this is my daughter Margarita - I 
felt a pain.... We people in recovery, and in the consumer world, are 
to blame for some of it, and we've got to take responsibility."

Whitaker thinks marijuana, at least, should be legalized and 
regulated - though he says that he doesn't use it himself.

He wants to see nonviolent drug use decriminalized, with the scads 
currently spent on interdiction and incarceration redirected into 
education and treatment that can save lives on both sides of the border.

As a drug counselor, he said, it's become clear to him that it's 
primarily the wealthy who have access to immediate, credible 
treatment programs, and everyone else waits in line.

When the mothers from Mexico first crossed the border early in 
August, Whitaker drove down to offer his apology and support.

"They hugged me, and I cried, hugged them back and said, 'I will do 
what I can to help.' "
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom