Lillian Archuleta is crying at the jailhouse visitors' window.
Crying because she is here again. Crying because of the wasted years. Crying because she can't see Billy compete in the 2002 Winter Games here in her hometown. Crying because Robbie, one of her boys, has come to visit her.
"I'm sorry," she begins in a rush of words. "I told you I wouldn't do this again. I don't know what happened, I. . . "
"Mom, look at me," says Robbie, trying to interrupt. "Mom. Mom! Mom!! Look at me. Look at me. I'm not mad at you."
She has long black hair and her arms are adorned with several tattoos. She is 51, and her face is tired and sad. It is difficult enough to be in here, but then she got word that Billy was going to be in the Olympics. The only way she can see him race in the four-man bobsled competition will be on the jail TV.
"I'll record all of it for you," says Robbie. "I've saved all of the articles. Billy says, 'Hi.'"
They talk for several minutes, Lillian working through her guilt and Robbie trying to soothe her. After being told that her son had come to visit, she fretted to the other inmates, "Oh, my gosh, my baby's here. What if he yells at me?" But as always Robbie is patient and sweet.
"We just want you to get better, Mom," he says. "It's been a rocky road."
It's an old story. Lillian in and out of trouble with drugs and the law, followed by a streak of repentance and embarrassment and vows that she will get better, followed by another relapse, followed by more regret and promises to change.
She was pregnant and addicted by 13. She had five babies by five fathers. Last anyone heard, Del was in prison. Della and Melanie are single mothers. Robbie — Robbie Smith — is newly married with a diploma, a good job and plans to attend college. And then there is Billy — Billy Schuffenhauer — Robbie's older half-brother and an Olympian.
They are survivors. While their mother wrestled with her demons, the boys were left to fend for themselves while being shuttled back and forth between home and orphanages and foster homes and the street and an uncle and grandmother.
"Look at how they turned out," Lillian marvels from the Salt Lake County jail, and it's true this merits notice. Most who grew up as Billy and Robbie did would carry a chip on their shoulders and repeat their parents' mistakes, but these young men, now in their 20s, are remarkably polite, well-spoken and ambitious.
"I decided I could make excuses and blame others, or I could take my experiences and turn them into something positive," says Billy.
He was 10 when he took up competitive break-dancing at a local community youth center, which proved to be a healthy distraction.
Later, he channeled his hopes and energy into track and field. At Weber State University, Billy became the top-ranked collegiate decathlete in the country and was hailed as the next Dan O'Brien, but injuries cost him a shot at a national title and eventually forced him to make a career change. Just two years after taking up bobsledding, he has won a spot on the USA 1 sled.
"Someone asked if I'd be interested in it, because I had been training for the (summer) Olympics," says Billy. "It was always my dream to be in the Olympics. I thought I might as well give it a shot."
His wife of five months, Amanda, supports her husband while he chases his dream. He needs to complete three more classes for a college degree, and then he plans to pursue a career in pharmaceutical sales.
"It's funny how people in the same family go different directions," says Lillian's brother, Louis Muniz. He should know. Muniz, 48, is a sergeant in the Salt Lake Police Department.
"My sister is not a bad person," he says. "She's got a good heart. But she's got the addiction. I don't know if she'll ever kick it. She's been through all the programs. She was doing pretty well last year. She had her own apartment. But then her old friends came around, and she couldn't turn them away. I stopped by to see who was there. As soon as I walked in people started scattering."
Uncle Louie and Aunt Liz, his wife, watch out for the family. Louie calls his sister several times a week to check on her. He and Liz stood in for the parents at the boys' weddings. When they read in the newspaper that Billy had made the Olympic team, Liz told her husband, "If he doesn't call in 5 minutes, I'm going to kick his butt." Moments later the phone rang.
"He had us both crying," says Louie.
Looking back, Louie says, "I told Billy how important it is that he's a role model for a lot of these kids who are struggling on the streets, and that he can accomplish anything if he puts his mind to."
But the odds were overwhelmingly against him. Billy hasn't met his real father, and his boyhood revolved around drugs, the street and finding new places to live.
"My mom and stepdad were heavy drug users," he says. "We were pretty much neglected by them."
He saw his parents shoot up drugs. He saw them pass out. He saw ambulances cart Lillian away after overdoses. Lillian and her husband were unemployed, living on food stamps and sleeping under whatever roof they could find until the next eviction notice.
Sometimes there was no roof at all. They lived on the streets, hanging out behind a supermarket on State Street, living out of a car, taking baths in an icy river above Memory Grove Park, sleeping in Pioneer Park. They sold their food stamps for beer and dope money, which meant the family had to scrounge for food. Billy was sent to find food in the garbage cans behind McDonald's. Dinner consisted of half-eaten Big Macs and scraps of chicken nuggets.
"Sometimes I wouldn't go home for days at a time," recalls Billy, who once performed break-dance routines in Temple Square and downtown malls for spare change. Says Robbie, "I remember sleeping in parks in downtown Salt Lake all the time. I was afraid. I really never slept. Lillian and my father were passed out on drugs."
Billy and Robbie and the other siblings spent most of their youth living in separate foster homes. When Billy was 7, he ran away from a foster home and tried to steal his little brother from his parents. He planned to carry him off in a pillow case to his grandmother's house, but Robbie was too heavy. He was caught and returned to foster care.
"I remember I was left home alone all the time," says Robbie. "Billy was always there to get food and make sure I was taken care of." Inevitably, the boys were dragged down with their parents. As early as 3 years old, Billy was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol with his parents and later his friends. He gave up marijuana at 10 after his parents bet him he couldn't do it, but he was drinking almost daily when he was in junior high.
"I realized sooner or later I was going to lead the same life (as his parents)," he says. "I decided if I was going to have a family and raise kids, I had better straighten out. I really thought about that. I knew that wasn't what I wanted for myself."
Perhaps as a way to distance themselves from the past, the boys rarely visit their mother. Billy hasn't seen her in more than a year. She was in jail then, too, doing a different stretch, and the experience moved him to tears.
"In one way it was a normal thing because she's done it so many times, but of course no one likes to see his parents behind bars," he says. "I don't even know why she was in there. I don't even ask anymore. I was talking to my uncle, and he said, 'Your mom's in jail again.' It's such a frequent thing. And it's always someone else's fault. When we talk it's always about how she's going to get her act together. The same stuff I've heard for 20 years. But she's my mom. All I can do is support her when I can."
Lillian has another month to go before she is released, and then she will try again for that new life. Louie will try to watch out for her. "I tell the officers to do their job, but they call me when she's in trouble," he says. "My biggest worry is they're going to find her dead somewhere."
Lillian says she is happy that her sons aren't repeating her mistakes. She's happy Robbie has a good job and Billy has the Olympics. "I tell every cop and every inmate that my son is going to be in the Olympics," she says, just before she is told to return to her cell.
Walking to the parking lot outside the jail, Robbie talks about his plans to become a family therapist. His message, he says, will be this: Just because your parents didn't live right is no excuse for the kids. "We grew up so fast," he says. "Maybe that's why I collect Hot Wheels (toy cars). It's a latent childhood. But I don't like to talk about the past. Lillian brings it up, but I'm out of that. She can't fix it. I can make my life better."
E-mail: drob@desnews.com
© 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company