Postscript: : Olympic Torchbearer’s Brief Shining Moment Fades Into Mist of Memories

When the rains came to the tiny Northern California town of Adin, the paint began to streak on the “Welcome to Adin, Patt Tambolleo” sign constructed during last summer’s Olympics fever, and the city fathers tore the placard down.

After Tambolleo ran her one-kilometer leg of the Olympic torch relay last July, she donated her torch to the Huntington Beach Public Library. But last month, the library took the torch out of its plush display case and temporarily replaced it with an exhibit of carved wooden birds.

Patt Tambolleo is finding out the hard way just how fleeting fame can be.

The Huntington Beach grandmother, now 71, was thrust into the spotlight last summer when she collected $3,000 door-to-door to carry the Olympic torch, only to find that relay organizers had scheduled her to run in Adin--population 575, located 50 miles south of the Oregon border.

Because she lives on Social Security, Tambolleo could not afford to travel 700 miles to run in the marathon. Additionally, she had suffered a heart attack only months earlier. Adin’s elevation is 4,200 feet, and Tambolleo said at the time that the lack of oxygen there would make strenuous exercise unsafe for her.

It looked as if she had lost her chance to run. “What?” she wailed at the time. “I can’t go 700 miles away, no siree. My doctor’s in Huntington Beach. What are they trying to do? Kill me off?”

But Tom Celorie, a Malibu resident, saved the day by trading his Newport Beach relay leg for Tambolleo’s Adin stretch. Five newspapers, seven television stations and a magazine recorded every moment of Tambolleo’s struggle and every stride of her one-kilometer stretch in the historic race.

A year has passed since she proudly bore the Olympic torch, Tambolleo said, and she now has nothing left but memories, four plaques, a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, her marathon uniform and videotapes of her television appearances.

The scrapbook is on the living room coffee table, and she and her husband, Mario, still watch the videotapes at least once a month.

“It was such a wonderful thing to happen to me,” Tambolleo said. “I was so thrilled. But it seems like when I finished running it was a letdown. I sat in my chair and just dropped.

“And I found there was no hereafter after. I got a couple of dinner invitations out of it, but that’s it.”

One of the invitations was from Adin, and last September Tambolleo finally drove to the tiny town with her husband.

“When we got there, it was so little,” she said. “But they loved seeing me, and they were thrilled I made it up there. They gave us a potluck dinner and had speeches.”

The city also gave Tambolleo a plaque that still hangs in her living room. It is adorned with Olympic torches and a map of California. There is an “X” at Orange County, and at Adin it is inscribed: “Patt Tambolleo, the town of Adin welcomes you to the heart of God’s country.”

Ironically, Adin may just give Tambolleo her only taste of permanent celebrity. The Rev. George Toney, pastor of the Adin Community Church, said the residents raised enough money to build a monument in the park--a flagpole for a large American flag, and a plaque inscribed with the names of local veterans and the runners who brought the Olympic flame to town.

“Her (Tambolleo’s) name may be on it,” Toney said. “I’m not sure, but it’s being stirred around in town.”