The Curtis Williams dilemma
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The fight is a quiet one now, removed from the visibility of Washington football games and visits from his teammates. Against the odds, Curtis Williams is battling for his limbs. For his future, for his very being.
Many miles away, a very different, behind-the-scenes campaign is being waged. Michelle Williams, his estranged wife, is fighting to recover delinquent child-support payments for the couple's 6-year-old daughter, Kymberly.
Caught in the middle is the university, which has collected donations from the community to help Curtis Williams, paralyzed from the neck down in a collision at Stanford last Oct. 28. But the university insists the money can't be used to help his daughter.
Michelle Williams knows her quest for money is not necessarily a popular one.
"A close friend of mine told me, `Why would you feel that way? You're just trying to get something for Kymberly,' " says Michelle Williams, who now lives in Anchorage, Alaska. "Every parent has the right to have the other parent's help. That's why they have laws.
"I just kind of decided, if I let myself worry about what other people think of me ... I have to remember I'm only doing it for her."
Officials at the state Department of Social and Health Services division of child support say Curtis Williams owes $12,808 for Kymberly's care, a sum still accruing at the rate of $283 a month. Their records show he has never paid any child support since the couple split in 1998 without divorcing.
"He's always said, `Just hang on,' " says Michelle, recalling conversations with Curtis before his injury. " `When I get to the NFL and get my degree and get a real job, I promise I'll help you with her.' "
That plan was sabotaged when Williams collided, helmet-to-helmet, with Stanford's Kerry Carter. Michelle Williams says she didn't learn of Curtis' injury until the day after it happened, finding out from a friend.
Almost simultaneously, Kymberly - "She's very much Daddy's girl," Michelle says - was watching the televised replay of the Stanford-Washington game. She ran into the kitchen of Michelle's mother and said, `Grandma, my Dad fell down and he won't get up.' "
When Michelle Williams learned of a fund established at Washington shortly after Williams' injury, she attempted to have the child-support division tap into it. But state attorneys concluded the description of the fund wasn't broad enough to cover child support.
Later, she began calling area news agencies to tell her story. She did this once before, when, frustrated at alleged incidents of spousal abuse by Williams early in his UW career, she accused the university of enabling his behavior by keeping him on scholarship and thus limiting outside earning potential.
As a result of those confrontations, a domestic-violence petition was entered against Curtis Williams in King County.
"Looking back now, I think our marriage wasn't timed right," Michelle Williams says. "We got married for all the right reasons. We loved each other. (But) with football and college for him, it was very hard to balance those things."
Michelle Williams, two years older than Curtis, grew up in Alaska and moved to central California, where Curtis was a standout at Bullard High in Fresno. She babysat for his older brother Robert's family and began dating Curtis.
The couple had Kymberly on Jan. 25, 1995 - Curtis wore No. 25 to honor that date - and they married in 1996, she says, shortly before Curtis began at the UW.
Soon, there were problems with the marriage. Michelle says they tried counseling, after which Curtis moved back into a dormitory. Subsequently, Michelle and Kymberly went back to Alaska.
"I just couldn't take it any more," she says of the marriage. "Too much drama."
Michelle says Curtis called Kymberly twice a week before the injury, but there has been no contact since. Michelle says they have sent Curtis e-mails, and Kymberly sent a keepsake to her dad: A collage of photographs of them together, framed by Popsicle sticks, with a newspaper announcement of her birth in the middle.
Child-support-agency officials and Curtis' attorney, Mike Hunsinger of Seattle, agree that Michelle obtained a court judgment in September 1998 that ordered Curtis to pay her $283 monthly for child support, and the officials back Michelle's contention that no support has been paid. But Hunsinger maintains his client had requested a delay of his support until he finished school and asked that future paperwork be sent to his parents' home in California.
"A couple of weeks later," Hunsinger says, "the state prepares this motion that he's the dad and has this obligation, mails it to his folks' house and spells the name of the street wrong.
"His folks never got it. It's not clear that it ever actually got there, so Curtis never knew about it."
Hunsinger maintains nothing took place for the next two years that would have alerted Curtis to his responsibility. Adolfo Capestany, community-relations manager for the child-support division, disputes that, saying, "Without being specific, during the two-year period, in some cases we were successful (in reaching Williams), in some cases not successful. "
King County, acting on behalf of the state, advanced the possibility of a contempt charge against Williams last summer, officials say. Hunsinger says he mailed those papers to Williams on Oct. 23 - five days before the injury.
"This is not a situation where he was knowingly a deadbeat dad," says Hunsinger, who also is contesting the calculation of money owed. "He didn't know he owed anything."
Hunsinger said this week Curtis prefers not to address the matter publicly, saying, "Basically, I'm speaking for him, and that's the way he wants it right now."
Nine days after the injury, the UW announced establishment of a fund "to support Williams with his long-term care and to assist with expenses over and above those covered by family, university and NCAA catastrophic-injury programs."
"It says in there, `Family expenses,' " Michelle says. "Well, Kymberly is his family."
When, at Michelle's urging, the child-support division attempted to attach the fund for the payments Curtis owes, attorneys for the two sides agreed the fund could not be used for that purpose.
UW athletic director Barbara Hedges says the fund has raised $176,000. The school stipulated that any unused funds would go toward establishment of a Curtis Williams scholarship.
Says Nancy Hovis, assistant attorney general at the UW, "Seeing that the fund was established to cover those extraordinary expenses associated with Curtis Williams' rehabilitation, and the donors and fans provided for that purpose, the conclusion was the university had a legal obligation to expend funds for the purposes set forth in the Curtis Williams Fund document."
Hovis says the school's press release announcing the fund and media accounts made it clear to potential donors that they would be giving to help pay for medical- and disability-related expenses.
But initial newspaper reports of the fund dealt more broadly, only mentioning expenses outside insurance coverage. Amid the heavy emotion over the Husky senior, it is debatable whether many fans and donors - including those who gave some $50,000 at the UCLA game Nov. 11 in what Coach Rick Neuheisel characterized as largely a "pass the hat" effort - knew the exact destination of the money.
"We were very specific about the Curtis Williams Fund, and it was for the care of Curtis Williams," Hedges says. "In every document we printed, that's exactly what we said. And when donors donated to the fund, that's the basis on which they donated."
The NCAA has authority over such funds because they involve money for student-athletes. NCAA spokeswoman Jane Jankowski says a rule limits use of the funds to medical expenses, and only a waiver requested by the UW and considered by an NCAA-membership subcommittee could overrule it.
Expenses that might fall between the cracks of insurance coverage are difficult to quantify. Hedges says it became clear they would arise after a conversation with Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who dealt last fall with a serious football injury to Adam Taliaferro.
"It's easier to address what is covered," says Mike Robbins, senior vice president of American Specialty Insurance Services Inc., the administrator for Mutual of Omaha, which insures NCAA athletes with a $20 million lifetime policy.
The distinction on some items, Robbins says, is whether they are "medically necessary." A specially equipped van might be deemed necessary, but a stereo system for it might not.
Robbins says, for example, that $100,000 is provided annually for home health care and custodial services. Some $6,000 is available for injury-related travel expenses for each individual in the immediate family.
The trip Curtis Williams made to the Rose Bowl, Robbins said, would not have been covered by insurance. Washington said a company called American Medical Response donated its services.
As for the catastrophic insurance being a possible source of child-support income, Robbins says "never in all the years we've administered the program" has there been a request for it. Says Capestany, "If we ran across something like that, we would certainly explore that being a source of payment."
In Anchorage, where Michelle Williams works in the gift department at Nordstrom's, she says sales are slow this time of year. She says she works on commission and usually takes home about $700 every two weeks.
"I'm not asking for $6,000 a month, I'm asking for $300 and maybe some health insurance," she says. "That's basic needs. I bet if they asked Curtis if he wanted some of that money (in the fund) to go to her, he'd say yes."
Hunsinger wouldn't disagree, saying, "Curtis wants to support Kymberly. He wanted to and still does. At this point, he has no idea how."
Her own lack of money, Michelle Williams says, is why she and Kymberly haven't been to see Curtis.
"I'd like to go see him and let him know we pray for him every day," she says, "and let him know God's going to take care of him and get him where he needs to be."
The dispute seems to have no winners, only losers. At the center of it is an engaging chatterbox who voices the greeting on her mother's telephone-answering machine.
At the end of it, Kymberly Williams pauses and then says: "Love ya."