Hit for a Big Loss : After Being Shot in Los Angeles, Steeler Cornerback Deon Figures Was Rocked by His Mother’s Death From Cancer

TEMPE, Ariz. —  They found the all-Big Eight charm he had given his mother in her bed after they had moved her body. She had been clutching it in her hand, her final thought, Deon Figures says, “on her youngest child as she took her last breath.”

Deon Figures’ mother died of cancer in August and almost no one within the Pittsburgh Steeler organization knew it. Figures, the starting cornerback for the Steelers, before becoming the victim of a random shooting in South Central Los Angeles last May, had been driven to return to the field--months before the doctors predicted--to be there for his mother--doing what he does best--one more time before she died.

“One day,” Figures says, while holding a shaky index finger in the air. “One day before I am to return in a game for the first time this year, she dies.

“And I wasn’t there when she took her last breath. Oh, man, that was so hard to take. I mean, when you lose your mom it’s always too soon. I shut myself off to the world. Instead of talking about it, I kept it all inside. I shut out my family. I’d go to work and I’d sit in my locker with my back to everybody. I wasn’t answering my phone, wasn’t responding to my pager. Nothing.”

This past year was the worst of his life. He said, “It’s like I was being shadowed by death.”

Six of his schoolmates, his friends, the guys he would play ball with, were shot dead by gunfire. Two were shot execution style. “People from my neighborhood,” he said. “One call after another: ‘So-and-so got shot.’ Unbelievable. People I won’t see any more.”

His mother, suffering from lung cancer, was going in and out of the hospital and needed to be on a respirator twice a week.

Figures had started 15 games for the Steelers at cornerback and had finished the 1994 season in dominating fashion. And he would have been the starting cornerback in Super Bowl XXX Sunday for the Steelers, but he was forced one May night by construction to detour from the freeway.

These were the streets of Los Angeles, and while Figures was raised in Compton a few miles away, he knew them well. And so when he saw a figure emerging from the night, running in dark clothes and then raising an arm supported by his other hand, he ducked.

“I didn’t have to see the gun to know it was there,” he says. “But it was two or three minutes later before I realized I had been shot.”

A bullet had penetrated his car door and had slammed into his knee. He might have noticed sooner, but he was speeding frantically from the scene. He wiped his hand across his knee, felt the blood and then he knew, driving on to the hospital where his sister worked.

“I wasn’t thinking about my career,” he says. “I was thinking how happy I was to be alive.”

Detective Mike Lynch of the Newton Robbery District said there was an investigation, but the case was closed because there was no chance to locate the gunman.

“The case was closed after I got shot,” he says. “There was no way they were going to find the guy or even investigate. That’s the way it is there.

“I was told there were 16 shootings in South Central that night.”

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Figures, 26, grew up in that environment, fought in grammar school and was suspended. Fought in junior high and was suspended. Fought in high school and was suspended. Received a scholarship to play football at Colorado, fought in college and was suspended for a year. Overslept, missed a meeting, was fined $1,000 and lost a Monday night starting assignment for the Steelers against Houston.

“Growing up, you had to have an attitude,” he says. “You can’t walk around Compton and be soft or I would have had to carry a gun.”

Bad as he had to be, here he is, one of 45 players who will suit up for the Steelers in the Super Bowl. Same position, same number and same first name minus the extra “i” as the other Deion playing for the Cowboys, but if all goes well, he will be there making plays on special teams and in certain passing situations.

“It’s all because of my mother and father; they provided the foundation,” Figures says. “There were so many times when I could have gone over the edge, but they were there to bring me back.”

It wasn’t easy. He was living in Crips territory and going to school with their rival gang, the Bloods, and that made for conflict.

“It’s not getting any better; it’s getting worse in those neighborhoods,” he says. “It’s harder on kids today than it was for me. Nowadays you don’t fight; you just shoot. You got kids going to elementary schools with guns.

“Me, I had sports and everyone knew that. I wasn’t into gang-banging. I was blessed to have good parents, and so when I was a teenager I already knew what I had to do. There were times when I went with my friends, sure, but I was a leader, not a follower. That’s what I think saved me. That’s what my father taught me: Just because Johnny does it, doesn’t mean Deon has to. To this day I like to be different.”

Real different. After being selected in the first round of the 1993 NFL draft and signing a multimillion-dollar deal to play for the Steelers, Figures declined to buy a fancy new car.

“I grew up learning how to sacrifice, and glamour, glitter and gold, that’s not me,” he says. “I don’t need the spotlight.”

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There is a chance he may never again have the spotlight. The gunshot wound, which damaged his knee, required extensive surgery, and although he says he’s healthy again, he has not been as effective in competition.

He overcame the knock of being too slow to play cornerback after coming out of college, but now maybe he is too slow. He is still being paid as a starter, and if unable to win full-time employment in training camp next year, he might be waived.

“Actions speak louder than words; let’s see what happens next year,” he says. “Tell me I can’t do it, I respect that, but I will prove you wrong. I’m a starter. I was playing damn good football before all this crud happened. I don’t know how the Steelers will handle it, but believe me, I know now I can handle anything after what I have gone through this year.”

He wasn’t supposed to return to full strength at all this season. But he came back early from his injury, too soon, some say, but he had to hurry, he says. “I had to get back on the field before she went,” he says, and the tough guy from the tough neighborhood is fighting back the tears now.

“Why did she have to die then--one day before I make it back. Why not a week later? A month later. An hour later? I ask myself these questions all the time.”

She had been ill for more than a year, but still it was sudden. There was a message at his condo in Pittsburgh: Call home, something has happened to your brother.

“I called home and wanted to know which brother? What happened? And it was a neighbor who told me; my mom had died. I just got cold. Numb.

“Your first reaction is anger. You just want to . . . “ and he knocks over a chair as he becomes emotional. “Man, I wanted to go and do a whole lot of stuff. I wanted to hurt people.”

He went to Steeler Coach Bill Cowher, told him to tell no one of his loss, then sat stunned as Cowher asked him to play the next day.

“I was shocked,” he says, “I couldn’t believe he asked me that, but he said life goes on. And that ticked me off. I didn’t want to hear that crap. I knew it, but I didn’t want to hear it.”

But he played. He talked to his father, and he played and then he returned home.

“You know, she was supposed to come and see me play in October,” he says. “I wish she could be here now to see me play in the Super Bowl. If she had lived, it would have made things so much easier for me this year. My mom was something.

“My dad started finding little notes in the bottom of drawers about two months ago: ‘Thanks for taking care of me, thanks for being there to the end,’ and things like that. It just blows you away. It all hit me, and it was like it was happening again and I just fell apart.”

Figures could have made it easier on himself this year, but he withdrew. His teammates, in some cases, remain unaware of his personal tragedy. The guy who was known as Deon Seven Figures after earning the big bucks as a rookie went into a shell. He talked to no one, his father included, about the death of his mother until pressed and then pressed again Thursday.

“I shut out everyone, but it’s like I’m taking a deep breath talking about this now,” he says. “I feel a lot of stuff. I still wonder a lot of times if I’m going to go over the edge. I mean, I’ve wanted to go over the edge. I keep things so bottled up.”

And what is that edge? he is asked, and he responds with knowing laughter although unwilling to share. “I’ll be all right,” he says. “People might expect me to screw up, but now I’ve got a guardian angel.

“I mean, my mother is right here,” he says, pointing to his chest. “I have a tattoo here: It’s like a broken heart with the word, ‘Mom,’ and ‘RIP’ on one side, and ‘8-23-95’ on the other. She’s right here.”