MESSAGE #437 - WHAT A STORY!

If the Moccos do well this weekend, can a movie be far behind?

Pain, prison and the pursuit of gold
A scarred family's Olympic trial

Friday, June 13, 2008
Steve Politi
The Newark Star-Ledger

We want our Olympic stories to fit neatly into made-for-TV themes -- with heroes and villains, champions and losers. But where do we put the Mocco family and its incredible tale?
How do you capture the emotions of a family that has two elite athletes competing in Team USA trials this weekend in Las Vegas? Katie Mocco, a rising star in judo, fights for her dream today. Steve Mocco, one of the best heavyweight wrestlers in the world, chases his on Sunday.
How can you understand the way family patriarch Joe Mocco feels with two of his six children on the verge of greatness? Especially when he prays daily for three other children who died in horrific car accidents not far from their North Bergen home?

How do you reconcile Mocco as a selfless father who drags suitcases filled with food on family road trips to save money when he served five years in prison on racketeering charges? When he missed a chunk of their childhood?

No, there is nothing easy about this story, nothing TV producers can fit into a slick Olympic feature. But if Steve or Katie Mocco -- or both -- ends up on a medal stand in Beijing this August, all of the Moccos will share that moment.
And the impressive part won't be a gold medal. It will be how this family didn't break.

Maybe we should start with the good.

Joe Mocco, 64, is the reason his kids can train full-time without worry. He pays their rent and sends them money to cover their expenses. He travels to every tournament, and he never packs light.

He spent the days leading up to Las Vegas shopping for the best deals on groceries, then he and his wife, Helen, prepared a week of meals to take on his flight Wednesday. Helen, a grammar school teacher, decided to stay home.
One slab of London Broil, cooked and frozen. ... Two whole cooked chickens, cut up and sealed in plastic bags. ... One casserole dish of chicken parmigiana, prepared and frozen. ... Two jars of homemade soup. ...

"Believe me, there's a science to it," Mocco said earlier this week as he held up London Broil he bought for $1.39 a pound. "We're not wealthy people. We're not poor, but we're not wealthy."

So instead of a table for seven at a swank restaurant on the strip, his family will eat around a hotel-room bed. Mocco will cook in a small microwave he lugged along from Hudson County.
Cutting corners is nothing new for the family. Mocco bought a used Ford Extended Van in 1990 for the trips where they could sleep. And when that wasn't big enough? He extended the extended van, using parts from a junkyard to add another four and a half feet on the back.
He fashioned it with four beds, including one big enough for Steve, who is 26 and now weighs 275 pounds. He installed a refrigerator and a sink. He put up a curtain between the two rear doors, running a hose from the sink for a makeshift shower.

Everyone used that shower except Katie, who was just a bit mortified. "We called it Frankenvan," Katie, 24, said with a giggle. "I pretended I was embarrassed, but it was actually pretty cool."

The van has almost 400,000 miles on it. It followed Steve, who went 216-1 as a prep wrestler at St. Benedict's and Blair Academy, onto stardom at Iowa and Oklahoma State. It carried Katie as she dropped out of college and became a national judo champion in 2005.
The family lived in that van and became closer in it. But there was a time when the father wasn't around to do the driving.

Joe Mocco might have been plain old "dad" to his children, but to state investigators, he was "The Big Guy," "The King" and "God." He was the town clerk in North Bergen, a longtime powerbroker in Hudson County, and according to court documents, he also was corrupt.
Mocco was charged with taking more than $56,000 in bribes to allow a hauling company to illegally dump garbage in North Bergen. He was convicted of racketeering in 1989, but avoided prison until July 1995 with appeals.

Steve Mocco was entering the sixth grade, his promise as a wrestler beginning to show when his father was sent to prison.

"I did nothing," Joe Mocco said, claiming his political enemies wanted him out of the way. "They framed me. They absolutely framed me. I never met the people they were talking about."
State investigators, of course, tell a different story. They point to wiretaps, seized financial records and the rest of the evidence in their 116-page indictment. The trial lasted seven months, and when it ended, Mocco was sentenced to 20 years and ordered to pay a quarter of a million in fines and restitution.

Mocco, who once gave away 20,000 tomatoes in North Bergen in an effort to promote healthier lives in the town, spent three years at Bayside State prison in Leesburg and another two in an Elizabeth halfway house.

"It was a nightmare," said Mocco, who's still paying off the fine. "A total nightmare."
But not the only one his family would endure, and certainly not the worst.
There are six Mocco children in Las Vegas this weekend.

Steve and Katie are competing. Audrey, the oldest daughter, is there. So is Joey, an Ivy League grad and a lawyer, and J, a neurosurgeon. So is Colleen, the youngest and a college student.
Michael never made it.

Neither did Diana.

Neither did Peter.

The first accident was in July 1982. Michael, then 6, and Diana, just 2, were crossing Kennedy Boulevard in North Bergen with their baby-sitter. Cops were chasing a stolen 1973 Chevrolet. The light at 84th Street turned red. The Chevy swerved into the other lane and struck the pedestrians. All three died.

The second accident happened two days before Christmas in 1989, just five blocks from the site of the first. Mocco was bringing his family home from a wrestling tournament. The kids looked out and saw a man in a Santa Claus outfit on the sidewalk.
Mocco stopped the van to let them out, but Peter, then 4, slipped on the ice and fell under the van. Mocco never knew his son was unconscious and under one of the wheels when the light turned green and he hit the gas.

"I picked him up and rushed to the hospital," Mocco said. "We waited for the news for four or five hours."

The father inhaled deeply.

"He would be 23 now."

Does sorrow surpass scandal when telling this story? Does triumph top tragedy when recounting the Mocco family's odyssey to the brink of the Olympics?

"We've had a lot of adversity in the course of our lives," Joe Mocco said. "But it has not hindered or crippled (my children) in any way.
"If anything, it has made us stronger."

Both Moccos will be underdogs this weekend, forced to emerge from the challenger's bracket for a shot at the winner-takes-all final and a ticket to Beijing. One misstep, one slip or stumble, and another four years of training and sacrifice will vanish.

That is the central theme of nearly every Olympic story. But not this one. When the Moccos settle in for dinner around that hotel bed this weekend, when their father prepares his meals in that tiny microwave, the hardest part of their journey will be behind them.

Steve Politi appears regularly in The Star-Ledger.
He may be reached at spoliti@starledger.