Frog Fancier Jumped At Fame; Now It's Escaped Him

Andy Koffman can't let go. He got hooked; oh, how he got hooked. Andy was calling, wanting another 15-minute ride with fame.

True, that ride already put his business in shambles; and Andy had to borrow money from relatives to feed his wife and two little kids; and at age 40, Andy ended up taking nitroglycerin for his heart. Yes, he got hooked.

He still can't let go. He still talks about being on Johnny Carson as though it happened yesterday. Andy's wife, Jacquie, tells what it's like when Andy brings out the videotapes of his old appearances.

``He watches them over and over, and everybody has to be quiet or he gets upset,'' she said. ``He doesn't like it when I make jokes. But once you've heard the story once, twice, 800 times, it's not interesting.''

Andy Koffman and his African Goliath frogs last year were a ready-made human-interest story. There were also all those TV shows needing to fill time. There were all those newspapers trying to wake readers out of boredom.

Now do you have a faint recollection of Andy? The zoological importer who, on one of his trips to Cameroon in West Africa, discovered the giant frogs? And then decided to enter them in the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee, held in a little California town in the Sierra Nevada foothills?

The locals thought it was unfair for Andy to compete and tried to bar him. The African frogs can grow to 3 1/2 feet long and weigh 8 pounds, while domestic frogs weigh maybe 1 pound. It was a conflict that the media loved.

``Let's see, I was once with Johnny Carson, once with Jay Leno. I was on `Good Morning America,' the `Today Show,' `CBS This Morning,' `Regis and Kathie Lee,' `A Current Affair,' `PM Magazine,' `ABC World News,' `NBC World News,' `CBS World News.' They had that `L.A. Law' show about my frogs. I did telephone interviews with almost all the European countries. I was on the BBC. I was on all the local news outlets in Los Angeles. In New York. Chicago. I was in `Weekly Reader.' The people at Guinness (Book of World Records) told me they believed I was on more front pages around the world than anybody has ever been during a six-month period, barring political persons or criminals,'' Andy said. ``I definitely had more than my 15 minutes of fame.''

The problem was, most of the time those interviews were done free. Johnny Carson's show paid $400, and the ``L.A. Law'' episode, which fictionalized Andy's frog-jumping problems, paid $2,000. The Globe, a tabloid, sent him a $50 check. That was it.

Andy knew he should have been talking to the zoos that had been his customers. He used to make a good living as a licensed animal importer. Andy kept talking to reporters, or taking his frogs to show to schools. He couldn't resist the limelight.

Pretty soon, Andy was borrowing money from his dad, a retired doctor. Pretty soon, Andy was in the hospital with chest pains, and taking nitro capsules.

He would tell his wife that if he could just win that frog-jumping contest, then the endorsements would come. Like American Express. ``Maybe you don't know me, but you've probably heard of my frogs.'' Like that.

Jacquie would tell him she thought it was a pipe dream. ``But it would be great if I have to eat my words,'' she said.

Last May, Andy did get his giant frogs into the Calaveras fair. Attendance during the four-day event jumped by 7,000, to 52,000, from previous years. Of course, the media showed up.

Unfortunately, the frogs got sick. They're used to a tropical climate, and that weekend was unusually cold. They also become stressed when transported by jet. The giant frogs were beaten in the finals, and some of them died when Andy returned to Seattle. Andy vowed that he'd never to transport frogs by plane anymore.

But Andy's ride was over. Before, somebody was always calling. ``After I lost, the phone stopped ringing,'' he remembered.

Andy misses the attention. He wants to prove his frogs can win that frog-jumping contest. He now sits in his home in Magnolia, flat broke, trying to figure out how to interest investors.

His wife says, ``He's a dreamer.''

But Andy Koffman just can't let go. Just one more time, one more time.

Erik Lacitis' column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Scene section of The Times.