Story of the Week. "From Warrior to Gladiator"

I wanted to introduce the Story of the Week. I want it to involve something significant and interesting. It could be about people or events. So this week I came across an article in Midweek which is one of Hawaii's newspapers about the Gladiator Toa. His story is inspiring especially to Polynesians that are trying to make it BIG. He shows his true character of being persistent with his dream.

http://www.midweek.com/content/story/theweekend_coverstory/tanoai_reed/


Here's a small clip of the article.

From Warrior to Gladiator

For years Tanoai Reed regretted quitting the UH football program, but now his show biz gamble is paying off for him and his family.

....We had no money. We were on food stamps. I rarely saw an extra dollar. I was on a football scholarship for college. This was my first real job.

“I was supposed to go back to football camp for my senior year, but they told me that they could use me for the rest of the movie for continuity. I stuck out because I was so big. So I did the math with my fingers and I thought, oh, I’m going to be a millionaire. So I stayed. But that wasn’t the case.”

After filming of Waterworld ended in L.A., Reed found himself alone with no family around and no job.

“I was like, ‘OK, now what do I do?,’” he says."I was waiting for these guys to call me, but reality was that in Hawaii I was a big fish in a small pond, but in L.A. I’m a small nobody.

“I didn’t know how to hustle as a stuntman. I didn’t have a head-shot. They didn’t tell me that part of the business.”

Reed ended up buying a truck,that he lived out of for about five months, and worked as a bouncer at some of the nightclubs in Hollywood.

After a couple of years and feeling “kind of lost,” Reed decided to move back to Hawaii.

“I was detailing cars and living pretty much homeless for a little bit,” remembers Reed. “I was living out of a van at a used car dealership in Mapunapuna for about two months. And I was like, ‘wow, this sucks. I can’t do this.’

“I felt like my life wasn’t going anywhere. For a good two, three years, I was really regretting my choice of leaving football.And then my father, Leroy, who is a team-ster in the movie industry, was working in San Francisco on Nash Bridges, and he called me up. He heard I was struggling and invited me to get my teamster license and work for him as a driver.

check on the link to read the whole story!!