First Column "Too Truthful"

Now it hurts to talk with him. "T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t—i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m G-g-g-g-g-g-g-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e—g-g-g-g-g-g-g." It often takes him that long to say his name.

    There he was, Tim Gregg, the coolest 32-year-old businessman in all of San Diego in 1985, really, really cute, the pre-opening general manager and opening leasing manager of Horton Plaza, coordinating most of its initial leases in a retail/entertainment center more attractive than anything else in America. He was charming and funny, a good speaker, and broke so many hearts that women around him took to wearing black arm bands when he got engaged to the prettiest Portuguese gal in Point Loma.

  Tim Greg

    There he was, doing the Ann Taylor lease deal on a cocktail napkin in Dobson's. Retailers, architects, developers and tourists from throughout the world came to Horton Plaza to see what Ernest hahn and Jon Jerde had cooked up, and Tim Gregg was right there. It was Gregg, more than anyone else on the leasing team, who persuaded Hahn to go after the unique retailers - kids on Melrose Avenue in L.A. and Montana Street in Santa Monica, Nature Co., Brookstone, Custom Shirt - while the conservative old-guard would have signed up Thom McCan and been done with it.

    Natty in Brooks Brothers suits and Armani shoes, Gregg flew all over with Hahn, a pilot, in Hahn's personal jet. He and his wife bought a neat house on the hill; they had a beautiful daughter. He was pleased with himself and he pleased others.

    It started in October 1983 with some hand-shaking, trembling, the faintest hint of what he would later call "these dark days," and his condition slowly deteriorated. Doctors couldn’t figure it out, so his files made it to hospitals all over the nation.

    By the time he was 33 years old in August 1986, one year after the opening of Horton Plaza, Tim Gregg became the youngest person in Southern California to be diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, a neurological condition that strikes its average victim at 62 years of age.

    It’s a debilitating, humiliating deterioration that makes your limbs shake and move stiffly, ruins your balance, exhausts your muscles, stutters and slurs your speech, constipates your bowels and depresses the hell out of the rest of your life. Tim Gregg's limbs became so uncontrollable he was once arrested at Horton Plaza's top competitor, Fashion Valley, because his legs froze in the parking lot and he couldn’t explain himself quickly enough to the guards.

    Mohamed Ali has Parkinson's Disease, caused by major blows to the brain. Attorney General Janet Reno has Parkinson's. So does the Reverend Billy Graham. About 1 million Americans have it, including a few thousand in San Diego, but it’s not one of what Gregg calls the "designer diseases" such as AIDS, cancer or Muscular Dystrophy.

    Gregg's son was born in December 1988 and Gregg shied from holding or feeding his baby for fear of dropping him. He did drop a camera on his head.

    Trying to hide his condition from everyone but his wife, he moved from Horton Plaza to leasing Larimer Square and Tivoli Brewery in Downtown Denver, became a troubleshooter for the Hahn Co., worked on a Santa Barbara retail project for about two years, returning to San Diego in 1991. He leased the Old Ferry Landing on Coronado for about six months, lost his job; became the top salesman for four months at Pacific Honda, got fired. Employers thought he was on drugs. Finally he squared with Sal Zandi, explaining his condition during the job interview, and Zandi hired him as a cashier at Horton Plaza Farmers Market. Telling Zandi about his situation "took a lot of pressure off me," says Gregg. "Sal is the nicest man who ever lived."

    He left that job after two years, unable to make his limbs, tongue and body work sufficiently.

    Along the way, as broken-hearted as his family, he lost his wife and the precious privilege to live in the same home with his children. While he has joint custody and full visitation rights, as a practical matter, he can’t see them but once a month, though he speaks with them by phone several times per week. He lost his house and Beemer and Volvo; his body is so spastic he can’t drive. He struggles with the bus. He's dropped all of his food in restaurants at least 10 times, he says. To pay at a store, he would step outside, write the check and return because the process was so slow, embarrassing and uncomfortable for others.

    His most recent job, painting construction signs for Fashion Valley, courtesy of Gene Kemp, lasted three months, ending this past July. "I couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t talk. But they were so nice, so kind to me."

    He ranks Kemp and the late Hahn right up there with Zandi in the nicest guys category.

    Gregg can’t hold down a job any longer.

    He's in the hole $10,000 now, living in a studio on Scott Street. Walking to the Denny's on Rosecrans a few weeks ago at 5 a.m. - he's become insomniac - he was robbed of his watch and cash.

    The worst is "the little things," he stutters ever so slowly. "I couldn’t hold up a banner at my son's Little League without shaking. I wanted to be there for my girl's first day of school, but I can’t drive; I have to take a bus. Public transportation is new to me. My Spanish is getting better, by the way."

    That was self-deprecating humor, by the way.

    Gregg has undergone almost every treatment in the book. He takes six prescription drugs daily, spends about three days a month in doctors' offices. Through Medicare, which covers the premium, he was able to negotiate his way into Kaiser. That reduced his pharmaceutical bills from $600 a month down to $50 in co-pays. Science doesn’t have a great handle on Parkinson's yet. Leslie Ricci of the San Diego Chapter of the American Parkinson Disease Association at 4901 Morena Blvd., Suite 104, says treatment is individualized and may include L-dopa combinations and other drugs to relieve symptoms. Neuroprotective agents may slow the progression.

    "New medications and neurorsurgical advances make the future of Parkinson research look very promising." At least that’s what the brochure says.

    On Nov. 18, Tim Gregg is scheduled to undergo up to 25 hours of experimental brain surgery at a Kaiser hospital in Sacramento. Dr. Helen Bronte-Stuart will perform the procedure that she developed, known as a pallidotomy. Only about 90 of these have been done, most or all on elderly patients, and no one has died on the table, says Gregg. It includes a cut in the scalp of six to eight inches. The time consumption involves searching for the microscopic points where incisions will be made to free up the flow of a naturally occurring biochemical called L-dopa. In Parkinson patients, the L-dopa is blocked in the brain. The procedure is not intended as a cure. If successful, his symptoms will be relieved - not eliminated - he will still require medication, and his symptoms would be expected to deteriorate to their current level within six years. "Because of my age, they think I’ll do very well," he says.

    Gregg needs help, obviously. This was not his idea, but he agreed to let the Metropolitan and Scripps Bank put this together for him. If you are moved, send a check to the Tim Gregg Fund, c/o Scripps Bank, 1075 Rosecrans St., San Diego, CA 92106. Maybe he can get the $10,000 of debt paid off before he goes under the knife. He says he could use a good word processing computer so he can complete a book he's writing about his condition, treatment and the surgery.

    "I want to let people know Parkinson's disease is not a death sentence," says Gregg. "There's always hope and always tomorrow. The love and affection I received from my family saved my life. It’s a very lonely disease, but you can’t do it alone. Church is fine. You can seek the help from some of these support groups. But you don’t have to be alone."

    He's brave, too.