Exuberance of L.A. Marathon Tempered by Runners' Deaths

By Cynthia H. Cho and Sandy Banks

March 20, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

The weather was perfect, the field enthusiastic, the times respectable, but Los Angeles’ annual street party masquerading as street race was marred Sunday by the deaths of two runners and the collapse of an elderly man who was hospitalized in critical condition.

Two retired law enforcement officers died after collapsing on the route. Det. Raul Reyna, 53, suffered a heart attack at mile 24 near Olympic Boulevard and Westmoreland Avenue, two miles short of the finish line. He died at Good Samaritan Hospital. The 28-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran had worked on the use of force investigation team at Parker Center, officials said.

Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy James Leone, 60, collapsed at mile 3, near Exposition Boulevard and Figueroa Street. “He just dropped ... keeled over and hit his face on the pavement,” said David Lawson, who interrupted his own run to administer CPR to the fallen runner.

“His face was covered with blood and his eyes were open, but we never really got a pulse,” said Lawson, a private pilot who volunteers part time on a ski patrol team. He and another runner, a physician, spent several minutes trying to revive Leone before paramedics arrived, said Lawson, who then resumed his run. Leone was pronounced dead upon arrival at California Hospital Medical Center.

Sheriff’s officials said Leone was participating in his 11th L.A. marathon. He was a 26-year member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and had retired in July 2000.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County’s coroner’s investigation division said Leone, who lived in St. George, Utah, had been under a doctor’s care and may have suffered from cardiovascular disease.

He was accompanied to the marathon by his wife and daughter. Marathon officials said this was the second time in the 21-year history of the race that there had been a fatality along the course.

The only other known death during the Los Angeles Marathon came in 1990, when a 59-year-old Altadena man under a doctor’s care for hypertension suffered a fatal heart attack while running in the fifth annual race. William McKinney, who had trained for the contest under a physician’s care, suffered heart failure at the 21-mile mark near Crenshaw and Pico boulevards.

Just nine blocks into the race Sunday, a third runner, believed to be in his 70s, suffered a heart attack near the intersection of Figueroa and 15th streets. The man, whose name was not released, was taken by paramedics to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was in critical but stable condition Sunday night.

The tragedies unfolded unnoticed by most runners.

More than 25,000 competed in the marathon, and 20,000 participated in the wheelchair race, bicycle run or companion 5-kilometer race. Open to all comers, the marathon has no qualifying requirements.

Race purists were captivated by the to-the-wire competition between elite men and women runners for a $100,000 bonus given to whoever crossed the finish line first. Russian Lidiya Grigoryeva won that distinction though her time was 17 minutes slower than the men’s winner, Benson Cherono of Kenya, because women were given a head start intended to equalize their chances in the novel challenge competition.

Thousands of other runners considered themselves winners just because they finished.

Sixteen months ago, Liz Roark weighed 323 pounds. A nurse, she got winded just walking down a hospital corridor. Gastric bypass surgery enabled her to lose 100 pounds, and eight months of training for the marathon helped her drop 65 pounds.

She ran Sunday’s marathon with two friends, fellow gastric bypass patients Keri Zwerner and Luana Ball. The trio has lost a combined 500 pounds in the last five years. They had to skip the typical pre-race, carbo-loading routine; the gastric bypass process rules out big pasta meals. But the women filled their fanny packs with bite-sized snacks, along with such essentials as water and cellphones.

Perseverance meant more to Roark than speed, as evidenced by her mascot -- a green turtle emblazoned on her white cap. It took her more than seven hours to run the 26.2-mile course.

Many of the runners were accompanied by friends. At the 15-mile marker, 30 men, women and children from Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in El Monte gathered beneath a cabana-style tent to cheer on 57 parishioners running in glowing lime-colored shirts.

Among the runners was their diminutive 64-year-old priest, Father Francisco Vitela, participating in his sixth marathon. Each year, the church’s runners line their sneakers up along the altar and Vitela blesses them with holy water.

Vitela, who says he “hates running,” listens to classical music on a headset as he runs and prays that more people will join the ministry. During a stop in the tent, parishioners fed him, massaged his legs, removed his shoes and changed his orthopedic socks. A few minutes later, he was back on the course. A few hours later, he would be celebrating evening Mass at the church.

The race route was designed to showcase the city’s architectural and cultural glory. It begins in the shadow of downtown high-rises and winds through neighborhoods in Koreatown, Little Ethiopia, the Crenshaw District and Hancock Park, passes along Museum Row and ends at the venerable Central Library.

Along the route, hundreds of volunteers pass out drinks, snacks and encouragement. At the start, they are charged with clearing away piles of banana peels, paper cups, granola bar wrappers and garbage bags donned to ward off the early morning chill. Discarded sweatshirts are collected and swept into giant trash bags, then donated to charities. At the finish line, volunteers pass out medals, escort exhausted runners from the course and even massage aching legs and feet.

For many runners, the race was a chance to enjoy a Los Angeles they never see. “The city is just beautiful,” said Joan Frieden, 60, of Pasadena, who finished in 5 hours and 35 minutes. “You really see the different ethnicities of the city because everyone comes out. It shows you what this town is all about.”

But one teenage runner got another view of this town -- one that shook her up but didn’t throw her off course. Seventeen-year-old Erika Stern was parking her car at the Universal City Red Line station shortly after dawn so she and a friend could take the subway to the marathon’s start when a gun-wielding man approached them and demanded her car. She gave him the keys and he drove off.

She called her parents, but wouldn’t let them come and get her. “She was crying, really frantic,” said her father, Mark Stern. “But all she could think of was that she had to get to the race on time.” She even asked the police officers who took her crime report if they could ferry her to the starting point. They weren’t able to, so she hopped onto the subway and made it in time for the race’s start.

Her parents had planned to drive down and meet her at the 10-mile mark. “It never occurred to us that something like this could happen,” Mark Stern said. “We’re just glad she was so brave, and so smart.”

A cross-country runner and student body president at El Camino High in Woodland Hills, Erika -- who is only 4 feet 9 -- took the interruption in stride. In fact, she bettered her marathon time from two years ago by almost 40 minutes, finishing in 4 1/2 hours. Credit the adrenaline rush.

Running the marathon almost made her forget her fright, she said. “Running makes me feel so good. There’s nothing I’d rather do. And the marathon is such an amazing experience, I didn’t want to miss it for anything. Now, I just hope they find my car.”

Times staff writers Hemmy So, Jonathan Abrams, Kelly-Anne Suarez, Jason Felch and Julie Cart contributed to this report.