4-4-04
By JEFF CARLTON, Staff Writer
News & Record
It certainly seemed like a stroke of good fortune to Donna Pihos-Howell when Dr. James Hart came into her life.
And maybe it was, after all.
Even after she has learned that the young doctor is actually an alleged con man named Shawn Stevens, an autograph dealer from upstate New York who now stands accused of fleecing her 80-year-old ex-husband, Pete Pihos, out of the last mementos of his Hall of Fame football career in exchange for $30,000 in phony checks.
Good fortune?
Sure. It's as simple as having your faith in humanity restored, and then multiplied a few times. Here's why:
Pihos, whose memory is losing an ongoing struggle with Alzheimer's disease, has his old Pro Bowl jerseys back, as well as his leather pads and the football signed by 25 fellow Hall of Famers.
Stevens, 26, was indicted last week in U.S. District Court in Greensboro on two counts of fraud.
And Pihos-Howell has found a way to pay Pihos' astronomical medical and dental bills, which were piling up in their Winston-Salem home. Since his story went national about a month ago, the outpouring of emotional and financial support has been mind-blowing.
"There are just so many good people out there," said Pihos-Howell, a 63-year-old high school librarian who has taken care of Pihos for the last four years. "I was so disheartened after all this happened. I tried not to be too upset about it -- I'm not a person to go to pieces over things like that -- but to find so many good people out there like Jeff Whitmore and Mike Hauser, it couldn't have turned out better."
Whitmore and Hauser are sports-memorabilia dealers who helped connect the dots, leading authorities to Stevens.
They'll split the $5,000 reward that was offered by the Hall of Fame Players Association for information leading to an arrest after Rick Reilly first told Pihos' story in the March 8 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Whitmore, a Richmond, Va., collector who runs a sports-autograph Web site called , plans to donate his share of the money to Pihos. Hauser, a Gloversville, N.Y., memorabilia dealer, wants to direct the bulk of his share toward an upcoming autograph-signing show that will honor Pihos and other aging former athletes in need.
Ron Mix, a lawyer who runs the Hall of Famers' association, says he'll soon be forwarding the $8,000 to $9,000 in donations that have come in to his office from people across the country who read Reilly's story and wanted to help Pihos.
What made Pihos' story so galling is that Stevens allegedly had preyed on ex-athletes who suffered from Alzheimer's or dementia. Pihos reportedly wasn't the first, or the last victim.
Mike Smrtic, Stevens' attorney, said the federal charges of interstate transportation of stolen property and issuing counterfeit checks against his client were expected. But he said that the U.S. Attorney's Office has not presented any evidence that Stevens was specifically going after people in declining mental health.
"How do you target ex-athletes with Alzheimer's?" Smrtic said. "I don't know how you would do that. Anyway, in this case, he dealt with the athlete's wife."
Stevens, who plans to turn himself in to authorities in North Carolina this month his lawyer said, first called Donna Pihos-Howell in early December. Calling himself Dr. James Hart, a New York City pediatrician looking to start a sports museum, he asked if he could bring some pictures down for Pihos to sign in exchange for a fee.
Pihos-Howell put him off until after Christmas. But then the bills came in for some major dental work that Pihos required. It would cost $6,000.
Given that, and the prospect of having to pay for adult day care, she figured it might be time to sell the mementos the All-NFL receiver and defensive end had given her from his days with the Philadelphia Eagles from 1947-55. They'd been sitting in a trunk since 1971, the year after he entered the Hall of Fame.
The next time Hart called, they set up a Jan. 31 meeting. Now he was interested in old jerseys, too, Pihos-Howell said.
When Pihos-Howell picked him up at the airport, she said, "Gosh, you look too young to be a pediatrician." He explained that he finished school early and seemed to have the right answers to all of her questions, she said.
When she tried to deposit the first check from Hart and it bounced, she called Mix at the Pro Football Hall of Fame and asked him what she should do. He told her to go to the local district attorney's office, which she says she did.
Mix also alerted Reilly at Sports Illustrated about the story, and he's written twice about it in the magazine.
Pihos-Howell's thinking at the time was: "Well, this might bring attention to the fact that so many of these players have Alzheimer's, and it might help get the things back somehow."
If only she knew.
To Whitmore and Hauser, the man described in Reilly's articles sounded like Stevens, whom they say had become a pariah in the world of sports autographs and memorabilia because of his reputation for shady practices.
Hauser, who had previously done a couple of signing shows with Stevens, hadn't heard from him since he had backed out of a 2003 show at the last minute. But he suspected that Stevens had resurfaced, using different identities, phone numbers and post office boxes.
In the meantime, Hart had scheduled another meeting. This time, he'd arranged to meet with former Baltimore Colt John Mackey at a Baltimore hotel. Mackey, who has Alzheimer's, and his wife, Sylvia, waited three hours. But Hart never showed.
The Mackeys went to the hotel manager, who had a credit card for Hart's room that was in Stevens' name and listed a Fonda, N.Y., billing address.
A Sports Illustrated reporter went to the address but was told no Stevenses lived there.
When Sylvia Mackey's hunt for Stevens led her to Hauser, it occurred to Hauser that he had taken a photo of Stevens with John Mackey at a show two years earlier.
The picture was still on his digital camera. He sent it via e-mail to Sylvia Mackey and Donna Pihos-Howell and asked: "Is this Dr. Hart?"
"The eyes. He had very unusual eyes," Pihos-Howell recalled. "I knew that was him."
Mackey concurred, and so did Lou Creekmur, a former Detroit Lion who allegedly had received a phony $5,000 check from Hart for signed photos.
Police acted on the evidence, and indictments followed.
Mix says he believes Stevens deserves prison time -- he faces up to 10 years -- but says his alleged crimes are, in a bizarre way, overshadowed by the manner in which so many people worked together to set things right.
Hauser says it's also a good cautionary tale for the autograph-signings industry.
"It's kind of a wake-up call," Hauser said.
"People will be more careful."
Pihos-Howell is just thankful that, in the end, good fortune smiled on her and Pete, even if he can't fully comprehend the strange journey his Hall of Fame football has traveled.
"He recognized the things," she said, "and he was grinning about having them out."
Contact Jeff Carlton at 373-7065 or jcarlton@news-record.com
See details of all the day's news in tomorrow's News & Record