Percy D. Della

Sacramento - How’ s the new job? I asked with the subtlety of a
sledgehammer.

The voice on the other end of the line paused for breath.

To keep the edge off my query, I segued into something mundane.

But Luisito Espinosa was his usual cool dude. “Everything’s fine and dandy, sir,” he responded in Pilipino.

From a two-time world boxing champion to a stocker for giant retail chain Costco.

If that’s not a radical job switch what is. A sea change is more like it.

Yet, leave it to a real champion like Luisito to give everything a positive spin.

“I work alongside buddies. I am finally experiencing what working life in America is about” said Louie, pride brimming in his voice.

Louie now favors work gloves for the usual boxing gloves. He has traded the groin cup for a back brace.

He still wakes up in the wee hours– not to jog but to drive or catch the bus for the short workday commute from San Francisco to Daly City.

As a new employee at Costco, he works the unholy 4 a.m. shift. He helps keep the store filled to the ceiling before the doors swing open for wholesalers and then the retail shoppers.

He has not said so publicly, but Luisito appears to have let go of his hold on a science he once called sweet.

At 39 and pushing 40, he has come to grips with age.

The trigger for his change of heart seems to be the sympathetic action — I call it a gesture by the California Athletic Commission.

The commission is unwilling to license Louie again — lest he suffers
more heart-rending losses to upstarts out to carve a name at the
expense of a future Hall of Famer.

Luisito was a constant source of pride for Filipinos when he ruled both the bantamweight and featherweight boxing classes - one of only seven fighters to don dual world crowns.

He once said that he’ll hang it up once the hard-earned $150,000 purse from a championship fight in South Cotabato nine or 10 years ago and still owed him by absconding promoters - “is stashed in my children’s bank.”

Hermie Rivera, Louie’s former manager had filed a civil suit to collect the purse. But the case had been in legal limbo for years.

The judge assigned to hear the case has outrageously taken the longest time deliberating whether to inhibit or to rule.

Louie has written President Arroyo about his plight. He even sought current boxing hero Manny Pacquiao’s help.

His pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Ironically, Uncle Sam had finally granted Louie a green card after
years of waiting. At long last, he can find work outside his special skills of beak busting.

The Costco job is a start.

” I am serious about my job because I need to save for my family,” he stressed.

With wife Marie Cherie now living on her own in Las Vegas, Louie keeps family ties with his young children Janica, Niko and John Louie. The kids are in the care of his mother-in-law in Manila.

“It is important that my kids know that I still love them and that my hard work is for their well-being.”