PHYSICAL FEAT

STORY BY ELIZABETH BARBEE

PHOTOS BY DANNY FULGENCIO

These are the neighbors who feel most alive when their heartbeats rise, when drops of sweat cluster at their temples, when they’re pushing their bodies to new limits. They have different motivations propelling them forward, but whether they swim or box or golf, it’s all about drive. So lace up, stretch out and read up on how fitness changed these local athletes’ lives.

J E S S C H V E Z

Though he’s only 5-feet-5, Jesús Chávez is known in certain circles as “El Matador” or “The Killer.” It’s an appropriate name for a boxer, especially one of his caliber. During Chávez’s career as a lightweight fighter, he won 44 of 52 matches and garnered two world titles. But his rise to glory was far from smooth.

In the summer of 1990, when Chávez was 16 years old, he was arrested for armed robbery. He says he was an accomplice mixed up in the wrong crowd. It was his first offense, but he spent the next four years behind bars.

“When I was there I swore I was never going back to a prison or a jail cell,” he says. “But I knew about my immigration problem.”

The “problem” was that Chávez’s family moved from Chihuahua, Mexico to the United States when he was a child. They had been granted amnesty, but Chávez’s arrest meant he’d violated the terms of his immigration status. At the end of his sentence, he was immediately deported.

“There I was, with $50 in my pocket, in a place where I had never been —

Mexico City,” he remembers. “I basically hitchhiked my way back to Chihuahua and lived with my grandparents.”

Mexico was unfamiliar to Chávez. The United States was the only home he knew. After a couple months he “walked straight through the line,” boarded a plane and flew to Illinois. He says it was easy, probably because his English was perfect.

Chicago proved difficult. Chávez got calls from former friends who had become bad influences. Not wanting to get embroiled back in crime, he decided, at the suggestion of his father, to move to Austin, Texas.

It was there that he met Richard Lord, who owned a local boxing gym. Lord recognized Chávez’s talent and let him train and live in the facility. Pretty soon he had a promoter and was fighting against some of the biggest names in the industry.

But then he applied for a driver’s license.

“I didn’t have the right documentation,” he explains. “The only reason they didn’t deport me right away was I had a major promotional contract in the US so I was conducting business here.”

Eventually, Chávez voluntarily deported himself. He figured he’d be in Mex-