UNSETTLING

Sixteen million dollars.

Jiggle that number around in your deepest pocket, see how it feels.

It’s lottery money, lifetime money, 1,056 games worth of Monopoly money, a stack-of-one-dollar-bills-reaching-more-than-6,000-feet-high money.

Now, carry that thought to the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Covina, to a patch of grass in front of the Mausoleum of Christian Heritage.

The young football player whose death produced $16 million is buried here. But to find him, you need a weed whacker and a magnifying glass.

Amid rows of ornately decorated and elegantly worded bronze plaques, Rashidi Wheeler lies somewhere underneath a tiny cement disk.

Push back the grass that has grown over the disk, there is a faint number carved into the concrete. It’s not his football number. It’s his gravesite number. It’s 625. That’s him.

There is no headstone, no marker, no name, no dates, he’s here, somewhere, you think.

Sixteen million dollars

Now carry that thought to a faded one-bathroom house in Ontario, where, out front, grass chokes the base of a rusty and netless basketball goal.

This is the home of the mother of Rashidi Wheeler, the woman who was offered $16 million for her loss.

Inside, the kitchen is cluttered with moving boxes, and Linda Will apologizes.

She is selling the home and moving to a small place so she can use the profits to continue her lawsuit against Northwestern University, the school whose negligence she claimed killed her son.

“You want something to drink?� she asks, pulling out a Styrofoam cup. “Sorry, but all of our silverware is paper and plastic right now.�

Sixteen million dollars.

Now, finally, take that thought outside the Ontario house, to the small front yard where Will wanders onto a large circle of brown-stained lawn in the middle of the night.

She looks into the stars, finds Rashidi’s spirit among the streaks and twinkles, asks him the same question we ask you today.

What is a life worth?

A fit, 22-year-old college strong safety dies of exercise-induced bronchial asthma after enduring a grueling and NCAA-outlawed sprint drill.

He dies after collapsing and lying for nearly 40 minutes on the sideline of a practice field while team staff members continue to tape and monitor the drill.

He dies amid a scene that teammates later described as “chaos,� with his asthma attack allegedly misdiagnosed and the severity of his injury allegedly misunderstood.

If this deceased young man is your son, could your grief be bought and your conscience closed for an estimated $16 million?

Or would you refuse the check until an apology was given, a coach was fired, a memorial was built, and somebody explained why one of your son’s medical records was destroyed in the process?

How much money would it take for Northwestern to be able to walk away from this tiny house in Ontario, this unmarked grave in Covina, the shattered lives of those who loved him, as if it never happened?

Every night, she asks Rashidi’s spirit this question. Every night, she says, she hears the same answer.

“Right up until his death, while he lay there waiting for an ambulance that didn’t come until too late, they tell me he was gasping and fighting to breathe,� she says. “That’s what he tells me to do now. To keep fighting.�

Sixteen million dollars.

It has been offered, and Linda Will turns it down. Repeatedly. In the courtroom in front of a judge. On the phone with her lawyers. In all the legal papers. No, no, no.

Wednesday marks the fourth anniversary of his death, and as a child’s memory fades, a mother’s conviction sharpens.

She won’t take a penny without accountability. She will accept no compensation without explanation. She won’t even erect a headstone without apologies and answers.

And everyone thinks she’s nuts.

“Wacko,� she says. “They all think I’m wacko.�

Her two former husbands, both of whom have a stake in the settlement through their other children, have demanded a settlement.

Her own lawyers -- she has gone through two firms -- have recommended a settlement.

Even the judge thinks she should settle, and is prepared to appoint a guardian to settle for her.

She refuses. She currently has no representation, no trial date, and, pretty soon, she will have no house, yet she doesn’t care.

“I’m an army of one,� she says through tears. “But a mother fighting for her child, that’s a powerful army.�

*

Linda Will will always remember the phone call.

It was the afternoon of Aug. 3, 2001.

She will always remember the phone call because it didn’t come from Northwestern, it came from her oldest son George Wheeler III, who had been called by another friend.

“Rashidi’s gone,� he told her.

“Gone where?� she said.

She didn’t believe it. She called Rashidi’s cellphone. It was answered by a teammate. She demanded that the phone be handed to Coach Randy Walker.

Only then, she said, was she able to speak to the man she wants fired.

“My son was dying, and I had to be the one to call them,� she says.

It was the beginning of a long and increasingly nasty fight between a rich institution and a retired prison guard that continues today.

The mother wants to know why the severity of her son’s asthma attack wasn’t diagnosed sooner.

The mother wants to know why her son, and others, were seemingly forced to tax themselves in the August sun in a sprint drill that the NCAA had outlawed for that time of year.

The mother wants to know why a team doctor could not produce the results of a physical exam administered to her son before the tragedy.

“Is it too much for a mother to ask why her son died, and why won’t somebody apologize for it?� she says.

Far from admitting liability, Northwestern continues to blame his death on the ingesting of dangerous growth supplements, despite the coroner’s report that it was an asthma-caused tragedy.

“We continue to believe that Mr. Wheeler’s death was caused by supplements containing ephedra taken on the day of his death,� said Alan Cubbage, Northwestern’s vice president for university relations.

Will says she has received about $50,000 in a settlement of a suit with the drug manufacturers, but maintains Northwestern, not drugs, was the culprit.

Cubbage said his school is ready to fight that charge, but, while “Northwestern is prepared to go to trial, at the same time, we are quite willing to engage in an alternative means to settle the suit.�

Lawyers have since confirmed that the school has offered around $16 million, a figure that immediately led to everyone to beg Linda Will to move on.

It has been at least eight months since the offer. She still refuses to move a muscle.

“You tell me, how could I live with myself if I let my son die in vain?� she says. “If they’re not responsible, why did they offer me $16 million?�

She won’t move from the living room that is dominated by a huge table filled with Rashidi’s medals and trophies dating from Northwestern to La Verne Damien High to T-ball.

Did you bring these out for the newspaper photo shoot, she is asked?

“No, I’ve had it like this for about a year,� she says.

She won’t move from the narrow hallway filled with so many Rashidi football photos, there are even shots of the Northwestern team with Walker and some of those officials who she claims were negligent in his death.

“I’m not going to let anyone take the shine off my son,� she says.

And she won’t move from the bedroom where she says Rashidi still visits her in her dreams.

“People are really going to think I’m crazy now,� she says, chuckling. “But one time he came to me, put his arm out to grab me, and another boy pulled him away. My pastor said that was probably his angel.�

With a smooth face and soft voice, Linda Will, 52, has an ethereal presence, but critics say don’t be fooled.

“She can be pretty stubborn, angry, vindictive,� says Hershel Will, her former husband who helped raise Rashidi for several years. “In his case, she’s just not being realistic.�

Along with her other ex-husband, George Wheeler Jr., Hershel Will is pushing for the settlement.

He wouldn’t receive any money, but a chunk of it would go to his teenage son, Hershel Jr., who still lives with his mother even as she refuses to accept the payment.

Wheeler Jr. is pushing for the money for himself and his three children -- Rashidi’s brother George and two half-brothers.

“I think what she’s doing is pretty much a waste. She’s not going to get what she wants, she doesn’t understand how the process works,� Hershel Will says. “That money could really be used to help my son and others, to help spread Rashidi’s legacy.�

In Linda Will’s world, the process has to include not only an apology that will never come, but a firing of Randy Walker that won’t happen, at least not for these reasons.

In six years as head coach, Walker has led the Wildcats to two bowl games and consecutive six-win seasons, which already makes him one of the best coaches in that school’s sordid football history.

“Any discussion of firing the coach is not on the table, and that’s probably more than I should say about it,� Northwestern’s Cubbage says.

She can obviously forget the apology because of the school’s charge of ephedra use, she will never recover her son’s lost physical, and it is doubtful that Northwestern would build a permanent memorial to a family that continues to fight them in court.

Told this, Will shrugs.

“I fault them for their cover-up, I fault them for their lack of humanity,� she says. “I don’t think it’s wrong to ask someone to be fired when someone’s lost their life, is it?�

The size of this fight recently increased when the court appointed a minors guardian who suggested that Will be replaced as co-administrator of Wheeler’s estate because, essentially, she is being foolish in not accepting the settlement.

“Linda Will has, in her own mistaken misconstruction of her interest, blocked the settlement,� read the report from guardian George B. Collins, later adding, “The Guardian is of the opinion that money for the Minors is more important than any form of vindication and that non-financial vindication is a waste and mismanagement.�

Will saw the report and wondered.

Were any of them there the day her son, angered at his Damien classmates’ treatment of an English teacher, blocked the classroom door and ordered everyone to sit down and listen?

Were they there when he asked a new, shy girl to sit with his cool friends at the cafeteria table, a simple act that so changed her life, she later drove cross-country to his funeral?

“My child was not a monetary figure, he was a loving human being,� she says. “I’m not going to let them diminish what happened to him, or who he was.�

Even if it means her reputation is being diminished in the process.

“If she has a cause, no matter how foolish, she’s willing to die for it,� Hershel Will says. “Ninety-nine percent of the people involved agree with me, that we should settle. But she marches to her own drummer.�

That maternal thump leads Linda Will to her late son’s gravesite at least twice a week.

She doesn’t need an expensive car to drive up the hill. She doesn’t need an expensive headstone to know where he is.

She doesn’t need $16 million to see him, to sit with him, to pray with him.

She has bought the space adjoining Rashidi’s for herself. She says she knows she will see Rashidi again. She says she wants him to be proud.

Judges don’t buy it. Lawyers don’t get it. A guardian can’t process it.

Maybe it takes a mother to understand it.

“When I die, I’ll know I did all I could for my son,� she says, her vision clear, her fight eternal. “Isn’t that payment enough?�

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.