For Marie
04/07/2006

FOR MARIE

Photo: Carlos Adames is pictured in Chiane's, the coffee shop he works at in downtown Torrington.

Story By Chris Romero
Photographs By John Murray

On this cold winter night, everything outside seems dark and cold. Cash registers ring in the background, car horns sound from the parking lot, a couple sitting across from Carlos Adames laughs. Maybe it’s an inside joke. Maybe the woman had a piece of food stuck between her teeth. This beautiful thing called life is happening at this very moment. People in the cafe are reading their books, sipping their coffee, talking on their cell phones. Maybe they’re talking to a husband, a wife, a brother, a mother. Maybe they're talking to someone they haven’t spoken to in years.

Maybe.

Carlos recalls dropping to his knees, calling out to God somewhere along the Appalachain Trail in the middle of nowhere. Sitting in a quiet Waterbury café, tears begin to swell the blue eyes of 31-year old Carlos as he talks about his aunt and the journey he made to keep her memory alive. His story is one of struggle, pain and triumph; his journey of will, strength and perseverance.

“I begged God to keep my aunt alive until I finished the hike,” Carlos says with a slight tremble in his voice. “I then called her and told her I started to hike for her. All she could say was ‘good’.”

That was the last Carlos would hear from his aunt,Marie Colligan, who died of breast cancer on March 15, 2004, only a couple of days after his last conversation with her while hiking the entire length of the Appalachain Trail. As a registered nurse in California, Carlos’s aunt had years of experience working with terminally ill patients. He knew that if he couldn’t save his aunt’s life, he would set out to help other cancer patients as she had throughout her career. Carlos promised his aunt Marie that he would start a cancer fund in her name and raise money for patients who couldn’t afford treatment.

Photo: Marie Culligan, before she got sick.

“I didn’t know where to begin,” the tall, ex-Ranger of the United States Army says. “The first thing that came to my mind was the Appalachian Trail. I told her I was going to walk 3,000 miles and tell people who she was.”

Carlos embarked on a journey that would take him from Georgia to Maine, through sunshine and rain. The hike was sponsored by the University of Connecticut’s Cancer Care Fund. This journey to raise money for cancer patients wasn’t just a hike: Carlos says it was to be an experience to redeem himself of mistakes, reflect on his life, and, most importantly, to make amends with his rough-and-tumble past.

Being a kid ain’t easy. Carlos was born to an Irish mother and a Puerto Rican father in Torrington. His mother dropped out of high school when she was 15-years-old and later struggled with drug abuse when he was a toddler. His father, a truck driver, committed suicide when Carlos was eight-years-old. He says his father was “burnt out and overwhelmed” by everyday life. His only memento of his father is a to letter given to him by his sister Melissa. The letter was written by a family in appreciation for a good deed.

After the family’s car got a flat tire, his father pulled his truck over to help the family change it.

“My father would give his last dollar or even the shirt of his back for someone in need,” Carlos says. “That’s why I try to give money and things to people and not expect anything back in return.”

Photo: Marie Culligan, while she was battling breast cancer.

Carlos says because he has ADHD, his mother had trouble keeping him calm and often neglected him. He says his aunt Marie usually stepped in and was the only person who could settle down his hyperactive character. His earliest recollection of his aunt dates back to his brief stay with her when he was only three-years-old. After throwing a tantrum, his aunt brought him outside to the balcony of her home to show Carlos a flock of birds flying across the sky. He says he immediately became calm, and the effect has lasted with him to this day.

“Every time I see birds I think about my aunt,” he proudly explains. “Her influence was just that powerful to me.”

Life in the Projects
As Carlos became an adolescent, he says his life didn’t get much easier. His father had died, and his mother remarried a verbally and physically abusive man. Carlos moved with his younger brother “Manny,” his mother and stepfather into a Hartford housing project. Violence stalked his every move. His stepfather would often unleash his alcoholic rage on Carlos.

“I would take the beatings so Manny wouldn’t have to,” he says while pounding his fist into the palm of his hand. “I lied and said a lot of things that I really didn’t do so Manny would be okay.”

Outside of his home didn’t prove to be much safer.

Without reason, Carlos says, other children chased him and beat him at school and in the housing project. One day Carlos decided he had enough. At 13-years-old, he confronted another child with a 45 millimeter automatic gun he stole from his stepfather after the boy punched him in the face. The boy left him alone after the incident. Carlos says violence was normal in the projects, and the only way to protect himself was to make a stand.

Around the same time, a man who owned a few parking lots in Hartford hired Carlos to work for him collecting tickets at the entrance booths and parking cars. Soon enough the man introduced him to the merciless world of drugs. Carlos says the man kept a large stash of cocaine in his office and would give him some from time to time. He soon became “hooked on coke,” but the habit ceased to last when Carlos moved out of the projects to live with his grandparents in Torrington. Here he found the structure he needed to finish high school. In the midst of all the changes, Carlos says he always kept his aunt, who was living in California, in his mind.

“I knew I wanted to be just like her,” he says. “She had so much ambition. I always wished she was my mother.”

Military Life
Carlos stops and takes a deep breath. His eyes begin to swell again with tears. He takes a moment of silence to himself. Slowly he regains his composure, ties a rubber band around his long, wavy ponytail to keep it falling from in his face, and proceeds to talk about his hike. Carlos implemented many survival tactics he learned throughout the course of his military service while on the Appalachian Trail. He says he needed to travel light, so he ditched anything that wasn’t necessary for his trip, even a surgical kit. The military taught him how to treat his wounds without medical assistance, heal himself by using medicinal plants to make tea, and even to cook food with the bare minimum.

“I took two Red Bull cans, pushed them together, and punched holes in the top,” he says. “Then I used denatured alcohol to make this little stove. It took about 15 minutes to cook my food.”

In 1992 Carlos joined the U.S. Army and was shipped to South Korea for training. Whether jumping from a helicopter, learning to handle weapons, or even taking center stage in the boxing ring, he says he was ready for new challenges. The new recruit took on boxing as a hobby and found himself fighting other soldiers. On top of his physical training for the infantry, Carlos trained heavily to prepare for matches during his free time. He used duct tape to fasten sandbags to aluminum poles to lift weights. He would wear a gas mask while running for five miles a day for breathing exercises.

“I would wear four bulletproof vests, combat boots, full camouflage, and run all the way up a mountain on my toes so I could be lighter on my feet in the ring,” the 6’3” ex-Ranger says.

Carlos says that not only did boxing help to improve his mental and physical strength, but the sport also provided a means of unleashing his balled up anger onto his opponents. His second fight aired on a South Korean television station, which he won by knocking out his opponent in only one minute and 30 seconds in the first round. He would later go on to win other matches.

In December of 1995, Carlos was accepted into Ranger School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. While training to become an elite soldier, Carlos says he endured the most vigorous physical and mental challenges of his life. The experience, he says, prepared him to withstand the physical hardships of his Appalachian Trail hike years later. The food and sleep deprivation he faced during Ranger training would come back to help him nine years later on his hike. This time around, Carlos says, his Ranger training kicked into gear while on his hike for cancer patients, and he was able to go for hours at a time without food, sleep, or drink.

Carlos finished Ranger School in 1996 and was selected to go through Green Beret training. He says he was thrilled to have been chosen by his officers for a shot at being among “the best of the best,” but there was a heavy price to pay: his marriage to his wife and high school sweetheart, Jessica, took a turn for the worse. She no longer wanted to be a part of his military life and didn’t want to live near Fort Bragg. Carlos says the choice was clear: it was either her or the Army.

His chose the Army.

Light at the End of the Tunnel
Depression quickly caught up with Carlos after divorcing his wife to continue his military career. He says he lost his will to be in the Army when he realized his dreams of having a family crumbled. Everything he had worked for, he says, vanished within a day.

“I just didn’t care anymore,” he says. “I told my sergeant, ‘I’m not going to jump out of planes anymore. I’m not re-enlisting.”

Carlos was honorably discharged from the Army in August of 1997. The next seven years would be spotted with isolation, periods of depression, drug abuse, and even an eight month prison sentence stemming from a incident in which Carlos was charged with first degree assault. Carlos served his time at Enfield’s Carl Robinson Correctional Facility, which provides inmates with work, drug rehab and Alcoholic Anonymous programs. Once a cocaine user, Carlos says his prison stint was a blessing in disguise.

“The experience got me sober and turned my life around,” he says after a brief pause. Carlos says he has been sober for five years. His sobriety date, March 11, falls just four days short of the second anniversary of his aunt’s death.

The Mountain Man on a Mission
Carlos stops talking to take a sip of coffee. He sips slowly, his blue eyes scan the café’s dining area to pick out any eavesdroppers. His physical presence overwhelms the small two-person dining table. His chair may be normal for an average sized person, but looks much too tiny to seat a man of Carlos’s stature. His mind wanders off to the stretch of the Appalachain Trail that runs through Pennsylvania.

“I was sick of Pennsylvania,” Carlos says. “I was sick of climbing all the rocks. I walked 49 miles straight with no sleep. That part took a day and a half.”

While on his journey, Carlos says he often stopped in small towns to solicit donations for his cause, promote himself to local media organizations, and to inform the police and fire departments of who he was and what he was doing. People would give him “wierd looks” and would be uneasy around him beacause he had grown a long beard, wore a red kilt, and was a complete stranger to the towns he passed through. He says he would check in with the police departments to let them know who he was for his own safety so that people wouldn’t think he was a “crazy person.”

As Carlos strolled through the towns with a 40 pound backpack strapped to his body, he says he would call local radio stations and newspapers in advance to promote his cause. it wasn’t long before people recognized him as “that hiker walking for cancer.” As for the red kilt, Carlos says it became his trademark after buying it at a North Carolina outfitters store because the shorts he wore while hiking began to irritate his skin.

“I eventually had to explain to people that no, I wasn’t from Scotland,” he said.

A steady intake of protein and the right vitamins were vital to his diet on the trail, Carlos said. When pepperoni sticks and beef jerky lost its excitement, Carlos beagn picking up care packages filled with cookies and other sweets sent by a woman who was only know as “Butterfly” on the return address. Carlos says he would let her know where his next stop would be so that the woman could send the packages to the towns’ post offices. He met the woman after the hike and discovered she was married with a family.

After trekking his first hike from Georgia to Maine in 2004, he decided to keep on promoting his cause. Carlos accomplished a second hike that took him from South Carolina to Missouri--the opposite direction of his first hike along the Appalachian Trail. The 29-year-old hiker, formally of a Hartford housing project, raised a combine total of approximately $5,000 for the UCONN Cancer Care Fund. One man. One dream. One cause.
The Aftermath
Carlos now hopes to follow in his aunt’s footsteps by studying to become a nurse working with cancer patients. While traveling along the trail, Carlos says he met many people who touched his life and fueled his determination to start a fund in his aunt’s name.

These people include a South Carolina woman who lost her three-year-old child to cancer, a seven-year-old New Hampshire girl with cancer who has undergone more than 35 operations, and a Virginia tatoo artist who survived cancer. Mothers, fathers, aunts, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters: people Carlos has met that serve as an inspiration to his cause, and a memory of his accomplishment.

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