Other Side of the Dream : Football: Kopp is a star at Pacific, but he recalls toll his family’s financial ruin took during prep days in Mission Viejo.

STOCKTON —  Is there anyone in Mission Viejo who can explain the concept of “The California Promise” to Troy Kopp? Who is available in that affluent community with its snappy marketing slogan to tell Kopp why his family--once a middle-class, three-kids-and-a-station-wagon cliche--fell hard through the cracks?

How did one of Orange County’s finest quarterbacks manage to get through four years at Mission Viejo High School while living in public parks and in teammates’ homes? And how did he ever keep it such a secret for so long?

Kopp is here now, far from Mission Viejo and its ugly memories. The sophomore quarterback is working hard, setting slews of NCAA passing records at University of the Pacific. He is working hard, too, at reversing the events that dragged him and his family to homelessness and despair in the cushioned lap of luxury.

Mission Viejo, with its sparkling swimming pools and master-planned housing tracts, meanders across the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains in south Orange County. Incorporated for only two years, the city of Mission Viejo is already one of the richest communities in one of California’s richest counties.

Its average household income is $64,327. Unemployment, always such an untidy thing, is at 1.9%. Mission Viejo’s Socioeconomic Status Score, a demographic indicator of affluence and quality of life, is 90. The United States as a whole is assigned a score of 53.

It was in that comfy setting that Troy Kopp came into his athletic maturity and fell out with his emotional stability. Speaking publicly for the first time about the years-long struggle with his family’s financial ruin and eventual homelessness, Kopp, 19, said he is at last coming to terms with separation from his family and the imprint the last six years have left on him.

“When I grew up, until the age of 13, everything was rosy,” Kopp said recently on the UOP campus. “My dad had a solid job. We were well off. My mom didn’t have to work.

“Then there were some bad investments. The business (his father) was in went under. It was like a depression. From then on, he just couldn’t find himself. For about five years he was kind of lost. I feel bad for him. My parents struggled. It hurt. It was hard.”

The financial strain wrought emotional strain as well. Kopp’s family was having a hard time staying together.

Gary Kopp, the father, began to get odd jobs. He managed a hotel in Dana Point and moved his family into one of the rooms.

When Troy was ready to enroll in high school, he wanted to go to Mission Viejo High, in the district where the family had lived before. To do that, Troy left his parents and his younger brothers, Travis and Trevor, and went to stay with a succession of families, most of whom had sons on the football team.

He spoke to his parents by phone and saw them at the football and baseball games in which he was becoming an increasingly bigger star. The family, though, continued to bounce from place to place and Troy continued to live with different families. He also kept secret why he never had any money, why he didn’t have a car or even a driver’s license, why he had to make excuses for not doing things with his friends that cost money.

A car--the teen-ager’s symbol of independence and freedom--was not a realistic option for Kopp. He bummed rides to and from school and relied on his friends to take him and his dates out. At a high school whose teen-agers are symbols of conspicuous consumption, Kopp was conspicuous in his parsimony.

Ron Drake, Mission Viejo’s baseball coach and assistant football coach, was among the few coaches and administrators who knew Troy’s secret.

“It was hard for him to get around,” Drake said. “It’s tough, not having a couple of bucks in your pocket. It’s tough when you’re growing up in Mission Viejo and other kids aren’t in the same situation.

“I can remember some bad things. I can remember Troy taking his shower in the locker room every morning. He has not led an easy 19 years. Character building? I don’t know if that situation helps anybody, to tell you the truth.”

Drake, whom Kopp says was like a father to him, tried to guide Troy. Kopp the athlete was maturing far faster than Kopp the young man, and Drake knew that the emotional fallout of Kopp’s estrangement from his family would surely find a hold deep within him and surface in odd and sudden ways. A 15- or 16-year-old can hold only so much in before it must come out. Kopp had sports to channel his anger and frustration.

“Troy’s real headstrong,” Drake said. “As an athlete, he was very emotional. He had the emotional intensity of a defensive lineman. He’d drip adrenaline before a game. He’d sure get everybody’s attention in a huddle, I’ll tell you.”

Aggression and intensity are not automatically bad things in sports, if they can be harnessed. But Kopp’s emotions sometimes affected his behavior off the field. His defense mechanism in dealing with his pain was to pretend he wasn’t feeling it. If you don’t care about anything, then nothing can hurt you.

Kopp lived with the Higashi family in his senior year at Mission Viejo. Jim Higashi was the team’s running back and shared his room at home with Kopp. Higashi said Kopp trod an emotionally rocky road at times.

“It all made him a tougher person. It made him keep going on in his life,” said Higashi, who attends UC Santa Barbara. “Our family tried to give him a normal situation. His parents were not in the best situation. His dad had bad habits and he lost everything. A lot of people (at school) knew he wasn’t with his family, but few knew the whole story. Troy didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. He became a little more reckless in his life. He didn’t care.”

Lacking a family life, Kopp poured himself into sports. He excelled at baseball with a powerful arm that made him a successful pitcher. Baseball was his first sport, the one thing he could do that pleased his father.

“My dad taught me everything about baseball,” Kopp said. “He used to work with me every day when I was little. Every day I wanted to go hit, he would throw pitches to me. He coached my Little League team. He was always there. Everything was working out. Then, everything started going wrong. Something hit him.”

After a mediocre start in football as a freshman, Kopp grew into a fiery, stubborn quarterback who, when he had to scramble with the ball, refused to run out of bounds or slide to the ground to avoid a hard tackle.

At 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds, Kopp was the top-rated passer in Orange County in 1988 and All-Southern Section in baseball and football. He was considered a major league baseball prospect as a catcher but hoped to get a scholarship to play football. For reasons still unknown to Kopp, he was not heavily recruited.

“I got a lot of mail . . . everyone does,” he said. “I thought there would be a lot of schools interested in me, but there weren’t. It was really hard. It killed me. I thought, ‘I worked this hard, I think I did well. I thought I was as good as the guys who went to the big schools.’ ”

Kopp doesn’t know why he was snubbed, but he uses the memory for motivation. He goes into each game with the goal, hoping to prove that other colleges made a mistake in not offering him a scholarship.

When Walt Harris offered him a scholarship to Pacific, Kopp accepted, thankfully. But when Kopp arrived in Stockton last year with a bad attitude to go with his big arm, Harris got on Kopp’s back and never got off.

“We did butt heads a lot in his freshman year,” Harris said, laughing at the understatement. “But I had a lot of confidence in Troy. I believed real strongly that he was a good kid. He didn’t talk much. I was able to communicate with him through a support group of friends and coaches, and he was able to communicate with me.

“I think his biggest problem is that he has a short fuse, which stubborn, strong-willed persons do. At times, I do, too. So there’s two hard-heads going at it.

“But he withstood it and battled through it. He’s a way better man and a way better quarterback than he would have been if it had happened in his junior year. But it hit him right between the eyes. He reared back on it. He didn’t like it much.”

Kopp, who had experienced only a modest amount of parental supervision, had trouble understanding that evenhanded discipline is often dispensed out of love, not malice. He simply didn’t want anyone telling him what to do.

“I’m not used to having a dad, or someone who is constantly on you,” Kopp said. “Sometimes when I get a coach who is just on me, on me, on me, I’m like, ‘Get off my back.’ That’s still a fault I have.

“I know Coach Harris is really patient with me. I’ve never had someone in my life who was constantly on me, like, ‘You’re grounded.’ Sometimes when it happens I just want to be left alone. I’ve had some wild times in my life. Those are all in the past. That’s over.”

Kopp’s impatience flared this season, though, after he hurt his left (non-throwing) shoulder in the first game of the season.

After sitting out two games, Kopp expected to return as the starting quarterback, even though he wasn’t fully effective. The Monday before Pacific played Cal State Long Beach last month, Kopp quit the team. He told Harris that he couldn’t accept not starting and was impatient with his injury.

Harris told Kopp to stop putting so much pressure on himself and things would happen. Kopp got into the game at Long Beach after two quarters and won his starting job back.

Financial considerations almost led to his signing with baseball’s Montreal Expos--Kopp was selected in the 12th round of last spring’s amateur draft. Harris said he was sure that Kopp would sign, and Kopp said that it was the thought of earning a paycheck immediately that nearly swayed him to turn pro.

In the end, the signing bonus of $5,000 was too small to outweigh the benefit of staying in school, Kopp said. After deciding to return to UOP, he spent the summer working out in Stockton and, along the way, made a decision. ‘Home’ would now be school, not Mission Viejo.

So, Kopp is settling in here and says he will spend his holidays and summers here, with only brief visits to his mother and brothers.

His father is in Wisconsin, putting his life back together, Kopp says. His mother has a job. Travis is a sophomore running back at Mission Viejo High and Trevor likes to surf. Normality is creeping back in. The pain is ebbing.

But the family is still a long way from realizing Mission Viejo’s promises. Kopp, with his new perspective of time and distance, sees it now as just a dream deferred, not disappeared.

“It’s been difficult,” Kopp said. “It’s been really difficult. But it has given me my motivation in sports. I knew it was my only way out. It still motivates me every day to think of my brothers and my mom. I just want to work hard so I can help them out. That’s my major motivation right now.

“Because my brothers never had the chances that I had, I want to make something of myself to help them and my mom. Just to make everything better.”

KOPP ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 1990

First player in NCAA history to throw for 500 yards in two consecutive games (against Cal State Fullerton and New Mexico State).

NCAA record for passing yardage in two consecutive games (against Cal State Fullerton and New Mexico State), 1,079. Former record, 1,024, set by Dave Wilson, Illinois, 1980 (against Ohio State and Indiana).

NCAA record for passing yardage in three consecutive games (against Cal State Fullerton, New Mexico State, Hawaii), 1,494. Former record, 1,430, set by Andre Ware, Houston, 1989 (against Arizona State, Temple, Baylor).

NCAA record for passing yardage in four consecutive games (against Nevada Las Vegas, Cal State Fullerton, New Mexico State, Hawaii), 1,884. Former record, 1,820, set by Andre Ware, Houston, 1989 (against Arizona State, Temple, Baylor, Nevada Las Vegas).

Set University of Pacific record for most touchdown passes in a season, 19. (Former record Bruce Parker, 1978, 17).

Against Hawaii last Saturday, set school record and tied Big West record for most completions in a game, 42, and set school and conference records for most attempts in one game, 73. NOTE--NCAA does not keep consecutive-game passing statistics for more than four games. However, for purpose of comparison, Kopp--in his last five games--has passed for 2,073 yards. Andre Ware, in 1989, had a five-game total of 2,067.