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News-Journal Online
Friends guide steps to new life
By CINDY F. CRAWFORD
Staff Writer
Last update: November 14, 2005
DAYTONA BEACH -- Beth Helms must have seen something in the bearded, soiled man who waited outside the KFC with a group of drunks for her to throw unsold chicken in the Dumpster.
For him, she put the thighs and legs on a box in the front, so he wouldn't have to dig too deep.
She sometimes wondered where he came from, what caused him to fall so low in life.
She never suspected that the homeless man with saliva dripping from his beard had risen from poverty in Puerto Rico to become a prominent criminal defense attorney, that he spoke before the island's highest court while wearing tailored suits and once made half a million dollars a year. He said he even owned a mountain, where he was building his dream house facing the ocean.
The grips of alcohol caused Juan Hernandez to lose it all -- including his law license.
But after 20 years of living in a drunken haze on the streets, some it in Daytona Beach, Helms watched him enter a second rags-to-riches journey when he found love, religion and -- most important of all -- sobriety.
He not only turned his life around, but also dedicated the next two decades to talking other alcoholics into walking the straight line.
It's a life with enough twists to make for a riveting three-act drama, but 80-year-old Hernandez has one more curtain call before the lights dim.
He wants his law license back, to make amends for his past mistakes. He will get one last shot Thursday when he appears before a Puerto Rican Supreme Court committee. But he won't be there alone. Helms and another friend from Daytona Beach will be there to testify to his reformation.
"I'd like to see him do it and get back all the things he's lost," said Helms, who is now 78 and retired in Ormond Beach. "He's learned to be grateful every day and not to take for granted what he has . . . He has made a difference to a lot of people."
ACT I: THE RISE OF JUAN HERNANDEZ
Hernandez was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, to an illiterate but well-meaning mother and a father who said he worked security for a hotel, but actually hurt people for local gangs, Hernandez said.
He speaks respectfully about his mother and his early experiences as an altar boy with the Catholic Church. But he is sensitive about his father's profession and said he rarely visited him in the prison where he served two life sentences for murder starting when Hernandez was 5. His father died of emphysema after 18 years behind bars.
Instead of wallowing in family troubles, Hernandez focused on his studies. That landed him a scholarship to the University of Puerto Rico, which paid for the seven years it took to get a bachelor's and law degree.
During college, Hernandez skipped parties and avoided alcohol to make sure he kept the grade point average he needed to maintain his scholarship. He graduated and, at 25, became one of the area's youngest criminal defense lawyers. He scored big clients, mostly drug dealers, and said he never lost a case. Making $500,000 a year in the 1950s, he bought his mother a house and eventually married the daughter of a wealthy Supreme Court judge.
Life was great, he said, and it caused his ego to grow and grow.
"They called me 'Mr. Hernandez' at the bank," he said in the heavy accent he's kept. "I liked that."
To feed his hungry ego, Hernandez started going to a local bar where the most prominent people in town gathered each night -- and the martinis flowed like water.
"When I drank, I felt like I was 10 feet tall," he said. "It gave me power, like magic. My IQ jumped 25 percent."
The martinis also started to cloud his judgment. He began throwing tantrums in the courtrooms, then made an unethical decision in a case and got caught. Within a week, Hernandez had lost everything. He was 30 years old.
ACT II: THE FALL OF JUAN HERNANDEZ
Disbarred and headed for divorce court, Hernandez left Puerto Rico to get cleaned up.
Without a dime to his name, he found a Salvation Army rehabilitation facility in Jacksonville that would accept him for free, so he moved to Florida.
After six months, he graduated from the program and got drunk with a buddy to celebrate. The buzz didn't wear off for years. He took his habit with him to California, where it escalated into drug abuse when he started taking medicines intended for patients at the mental institute where he worked.
Once again in need of rehabilitation, Hernandez returned to Central Florida hoping his sister would help. She put him on a bus back to Jacksonville for another six-month stint, but the bus broke down in Daytona Beach. He stopped at a nearby bar for a beer and missed the next bus. He never made it to his destination.
Instead, he spent the next several years living on the beach and begging in the streets of Daytona Beach. He scoured the streets for half-empty beer cans and was a regular outside the KFC on U.S. 1, where he met Helms.
Hernandez was at his lowest point when he met Cecilia Foxwell, an evangelist with the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses . While handing out pamphlets to the homeless living at the Silver Beach Avenue approach, Cecilia took a liking to Hernandez and offered to pay him $3 a day to clean the yard outside her beachside apartment complex, Seaire, which was nearby.
He came regularly for the cash and said he wasn't looking for anything more. But he began to bond with Cecilia as he learned more about the word of God and they started dating.
Cecilia dragged Hernandez kicking and screaming to his first AA meeting at the Almous Club off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He said he didn't believe it would work: "How can a bunch of drunks help me?"
But they did. Hernandez talked through his withdrawal symptoms by sharing personal stories and testimonials with his new friends. His "disintegrated spirit" soon filled with religion and a new purpose: helping others.
By 1982, Hernandez was clean and had a new wife: Cecilia. His focus changed toward family and starting a real estate business. He fixed up the ailing Seaire Apartment building, on the west side of Atlantic Avenue, and with Cecilia's help bought up properties on the beachside, which would later make him wealthy again.
ACT III: THE RESURRECTION OF JUAN HERNANDEZ
The first six months after Hernandez got sober, he hit the streets, scooping up any homeless alcoholic who would go with him to AA meetings or rehab centers. He went to his former hangouts -- the blood bank, which is now closed, beach approaches and various street corners -- hoping to "plant a seed" of the benefits of sobriety.
"When you get sober, you want everyone else to be sober, too," he said. "You're so filled with gratitude. It feels so good."
Hernandez, known throughout the county as "Juan of Puerto Rico," became a regular speaker at several area nonprofits, such as Serenity House and Reality House, and a regular at AA meetings, where Helms got to know him better while attending with her husband.
Emergency room nurse and recovering alcoholic Dennis Long remembers meeting him at AA 19 years ago.
"He's like a dad to me," said Long, whose sponsor is Hernandez. "He gives people no one else will help a job and gives them chances over and over."
Unlike many volunteers, Long said, Hernandez puts his "money where his mouth is." He recalled how he hired several different crews to paint one of his rental houses, even though he ended up with five new coats in a year, just to give people a job.
"He wants to give them confidence, to get them out of loser mode," Long said. "They need the little successes, simple tasks."
Fellow AA attendee Harold Poole, who is now nine years sober, said Hernandez reached out to him right away and has inspired him to give back to the community. Poole now coaches sports through the Police Athletic League.
For those who don't commit to AA, Hernandez can get tough. At a recent meeting, Hernandez put his hand on the shoulder of a man who fell back into old ways after 14 years sober and told him if he didn't see him at the next meeting, he knows where he lives.
Today, Hernandez has cut back on his outreach efforts, but still speaks at prisons and other AA groups and takes calls at all hours for help. He became an evangelist for the Jehovah's Witness church with Cecilia, but lost her to colon cancer in 1998. Regardless, he still cares for her daughter from a previous marriage, Felita, who is blind and mentally disabled.
His real estate deals have been profitable, but he hasn't reverted to the expensive suits and giant homes. He wears a simple blazer and a ski cap most days and still lives in the modest two-bedroom apartment at the Seaire. An older-model Rolls-Royce is the only reminder of his old ways, but for him it serves as more of a symbol of how far he's come.
Hernandez hopes testimonials about his new life will persuade the Puerto Rican Supreme Court to return his law license. He took letters from friends to his first hearing Sept. 27, but the judges asked to hear it in person. So Hernandez is paying to fly Helms and his longtime secretary, Joan Godfrey, to Puerto Rico for Thursday's hearing to prove that he's changed. He should know after two or three weeks.
For Hernandez, it's not about practicing law again. It's about ensuring that his complicated life had a happy ending.
"I'm the most happy man in the world right now, but I want to make amends," he said. "I 100 percent believe I'll get it back. I have God this time."
Did you know?
- With more than 6 million members worldwide, Jehovah's Witnesses have been active for more than 100 years.
- Charles Taze Russell helped found Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in 1881 in Pennsylvania. The name was later changed to The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and in 1931 became Jehovah's Witnesses.
- Jehovah's Witnesses take their name from a biblical passage, Isaiah 43:12: "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and I am God."
- Widely known as active missionaries, Jehovah's Witnesses believe their main goal is the establishment of God's Kingdom here on earth, which they believe will come after Armageddon. Witnesses believe the Earth will never be destroyed but will become a peaceful paradise.
— Compiled by News Researcher Megan Gallup
SOURCES: World Book Encyclopedia, Everything World's Religions Book, www.watchtower.org