BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Nothing Handsome About His Lot in Life

The face looked familiar, but not the blue denim jump suit or the stainless steel jewelry.

A jailhouse guard unlocked Al Stankie’s left handcuff. Then he sat down behind the bullet-proof glass viewing window, picked up the telephone, grinned and said to his visitor: “Hi, Handsome!”

He calls everyone Handsome. But it’s hard for him to be his customary flip self these days, what with his life at least temporarily on the rocks at the Los Angeles County Central Jail.

Al Stankie is the trainer who bragged to anyone who would listen a decade ago that a street urchin he had yanked out of a gang rumble in East Los Angeles, Paul Gonzales, was going to win a boxing gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Folks snickered. Gonzales barely weighed 100 pounds. But they pulled it off. Gonzales was voted the outstanding boxer of the 1984 Olympics.

For Stankie’s next act, he was going to do the same thing in Barcelona with another East Los Angeles boxer, Oscar de la Hoya.

But two weeks ago, Stankie made a funny-looking left turn in front of the Broadway boxing gym, at 108th and Broadway. A policeman pulled him over.

Stankie, who was a cop for 20 years, knew what was coming next. The officer ran a computer check and there were two hits.

Two outstanding drunk-driving warrants.

Stankie is one of the best-liked people in the Southern California boxing community, and nearly everyone hopes this latest mess will, finally, get his attention.

Al Stankie insists that he’s not an alcoholic. His friends disagree. A year ago, at the national amateur boxing tournament in Colorado Springs, he showed up drunk at the U.S. Olympic Committee training center, was kicked off the grounds, sent home and suspended for a year.

His reaction: “I had a few beers, so what?”

So, at 50, he has lost his second meal ticket, apparently. Oscar de la Hoya and his father, Joel, fired Stankie last week. Oscar, 18, is a Garfield High senior thought by many to be America’s brightest hope for a gold medal at Barcelona next year.

“I’ll believe (the firing) when I hear it from Oscar,” he said at the jailhouse visiting room.

Gonzales, training in Albuquerque, N.M., wasn’t surprised by Stankie’s latest setback.

“I love Al Stankie like he’s my father,” he said. “When he’s got his act together, he’s the greatest trainer in the world. At his best, he’s unstoppable. You want to be on his team.

“But he’s got that other side to him, too, and you don’t even want to be around him then. It’s really sad, because he won’t admit to himself that he even has a problem.”

Rudy De Leon, a retired LAPD captain, remembers a great cop.

“Al Stankie was a sensational cop,” he said.

“He was a vice officer without peer. He had expertise on city-wide prostitution, pimping and bookmaking unmatched in the department. And he was fearless. His undercover work was sensational. He could blend into any group because he could speak their street language.”

Stankie in those days lived a double life. Under an assumed name, he built a 15-0 record as a professional light heavyweight. When LAPD brass learned about it, he was suspended. Stankie fought the suspension, was reinstated, then quit for three years.

Later, he rejoined the LAPD and completed 20 years.

De Leon credits Stankie as a prime mover for getting the Hollenbeck Youth Center built.

“Al was the greatest guy for young kids I ever saw,” De Leon said. “At selling self-esteem, the belief you can defeat anyone, that you can achieve great things . . . no one is better at that than Al Stankie.

“Kids who were down and out at the Youth Center, many times Al would take them home, feed them and house them until he could find a place for them. I went over to his house one night and he had 15 kids sleeping on the floor, under blankets.”

And so a guy who by all accounts seems to be an important resource in this city languishes in jail.

The other day, his visitor asked Stankie if he has an alcohol problem.

“Look,” he said. “I can handle it. And to prove it to you, when I get out of here I won’t touch a drop for one year.”

When the visitor prepared to leave and the guard returned with the key to the handcuffs, there seemed to be just a touch less enthusiasm to Stankie’s farewell:

“See ya, Handsome!”

Both Harold Smith and Ed Bell are off Tony Tucker’s team, the heavyweight contender’s co-managers told a state Athletic Commission official this week.

“I met with Jack Cohen and Cary Medill, and they assured me they have no intention of doing any business with either Smith or Bell,” said Dale Ashley, assistant chief athletic inspector.

Ashley warned Tucker, the 40-1 heavyweight who has lost only to Mike Tyson, that he was risking suspension if the commission staff found evidence he was being advised by Smith. Bell, who had identified himself as Tucker’s promoter, was unlicensed, it turns out.

The flap surfaced when Bell, a Los Angeles nightclub owner, complained that Smith was trying to lure Tucker away from him. When he complained to the commission and it was discovered he had no promoter’s license, he applied for one.

Smith was issued a California manager’s license in 1988, after serving 5 1/2 years of a 10-year sentence after conviction for embezzling $21.3 million.

He managed heavyweight Tony Tubbs and junior-middleweight Tony Montgomery one year here but allowed his license to expire in 1989 and chose not to apply for renewal.

Boxing Notes

A three-bill legislative package introduced by Richard Floyd (D-Carson) and Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) sailed through the state Assembly on a 75-0 vote. The proposal eliminates outdated California Athletic Commission regulations, requires both boxers and managers to be present at a weigh-in and permits boxers to take the state’s required neurological exam at neurologists of their choosing.

Rafael Ruelas, Dan Goossen’s unbeaten (25-0) featherweight, meets Fernando Raul Teran (28-9) of Mexico May 17 at the Reseda Country Club.

Monterey Park businessman and boxing trainer Rudy Tellez, who wants to establish a youth boxing facility for Alhambra, San Gabriel and Monterey Park kids, cleared a major hurdle this week when the Alhambra parks commission approved his plan. Tellez and Alhambra officials will attempt to find a building to convert to a boxing club. . . . Undefeated Canadian heavyweight Lennox Lewis, who beat Riddick Bowe at the 1988 Olympics in the gold-medal bout, is out for six weeks with a shoulder injury. Lewis was to have fought Bonecrusher Smith May 22.