Parents share tragedies, arm Madera students with information
1/20/07
MADERA — Gabriela Carreon noticed a change in her classmate after Christmas break. The boy in her third-period biology class just looked a lot bigger.
It all made sense when Carreon, a sophomore at Madera South High and a junior varsity basketball player, attended a steroid prevention presentation Friday in the gym.
"And that wasn't him, when I saw him in the beginning of the year," she said. "I noticed, like what they said in the talk today, that he got, like, bigger breasts. I don't think that's the way to go, and he's a football player and that's going to affect him."
Carreon and her classmates were hit with a disturbing picture.
"It was very clear that steroids are not the way to go because there are alternatives to that," she said. "You can work out. To me, using steroids is cheating. I hear it from the guys, saying, 'I have bigger muscles. No, I have bigger muscles. Oh, you take steroids.' They're always talking about it, but I think that's just cheating."
Darcy Nainoa, 17, is a 6-foot-1, 395-pound senior defensive lineman for the Madera High football team who never had the need to bulk up. He hears the talk about steroids around campus.
"Sometimes I worry about my friends because I do know of people and it's hard to get them to stop even though you tell them to," he said. "That's what they want to do."
Asked if he ever thought about using steroids, Nainoa, who wants to play football in college, said, "It might cross my mind, but I don't think I'd ever do it because it makes no sense, especially because of the after-effects it has on your body.
The students heard stories about the physical and psychological damage steroids cause. They were told about suicides, mood swings, impotency and infertility, heart attacks, and how to recognize and help someone on steroids.
"I was just shocked about what the steroids did to them," Nainoa said, "how they had anger problems and how the one got mentally ill and said he started hearing voices talk to him and everything — it was just a shock."
A total of 2,500 students attended Friday's assembly and one Thursday at Madera High that were put on by the Efrain Anthony Marrero Foundation. Marrero, 19, committed suicide in September 2004. His parents say the steroids he used as a football player at Vacaville High were to blame.
"My wife cries every day about losing our son," his father, Frank, said, "and that's what leads us to come here. And the numbers are growing at an alarming rate — 23,000 athletes are using steroids in California."
Denise Garibaldi, a licensed psychologist in Palo Alto who also addressed the students, said there's no doubt steroids killed her son, Rob.
She watched as he went from a starting right fielder at USC and being drafted by the New York Yankees to becoming a "head case" strung out on steroids, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and eventually carted away in handcuffs and hospitalized. Rob, at age 20, heard from the pro scouts he was too small so he traveled to Tijuana and filled a prescription for steroids, Garibaldi said.
Rob did come out of the hospital and rehab, but only was home for a day when he ended his life.
"By the time he was talking about his future, he had already stolen a gun," Garibaldi said. "But then I was woken up at … he had killed himself in his car around the corner from our house. He watched the sun come up and was found by a jogger."
Madera South athletic director Marty Bitter said he doesn't hear a lot of talk about steroids, but that doesn't mean they're not there.
"I think we always want to go through and think, 'that's not our kids; our kids don't do that,'" he said. "But in reality, you look at some of the kids that you see come through, there's no doubt in my mind that it's [steroid use] out there, but I think it is very hard to detect.
"And mood swings [are] one of the things I would definitely look for, and some of these kids really show some of this."
