Olympian's strength built from life on the streets

Olympian's strength built from life on the streets
By Steve Almasy, CNN
February 22, 2010 8:51 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
As a child, bobsledder Bill Schuffenhauer often lived on the streets

His mother and stepfather were addicts

He turned to athletics in junior high and became a star decathlete

After his track career ended, he tried out and made bobsled team that won silver in 2002

Vancouver, British Columbia (CNN) -- Many kids dream of being in the Olympics one day. When U.S. bobsledder Bill Schuffenhauer was a child in Salt Lake City, Utah, he had no idea the Olympics even existed.

All he knew was his parents were drug addicts, that his mother was a prostitute who was often beaten in front of him. He knew that if he was going to survive, he had to do whatever it took to make it.

He stole from people; he ate from garbage cans; he got locked up in juvenile detention for breaking into a bike shop when he was trying to get something he could sell for money so he could eat.

He had few friends, most of them acquaintances of his mother or the other street kids, many of whom were in gangs. His mom and stepfather were constantly getting evicted. When he wasn't homeless and living in a park, he lived in foster homes. He skipped school a lot. He drank and got high on weed.

Life was hard and at times terrifying, and he dreamed of finding a real home.

"I knew that there was something better," Schuffenhauer, 36, said last week as he readied for his third Olympic Games. "And although there were a lot of horrible things that happened, it's made me a stronger person."

Just around the time he was entering junior high, Schuffenhauer's maternal grandmother, Sadie Muniz, took him. She lived in the town of Roy, Utah, about 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City. As tears began to build, he talked about her steadying influence and how she was always there to pull him up or pull him back when he started messing up again.
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http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/22/olympics.bobsledder.homeless/?hpt=T3