Neshannock’s Pasquarello turns life around, becomes a leader

By JOE SIMON

New Castle News

Leo Pasquarello was sound asleep one summer night, when his bedroom light suddenly flicked on.

As Pasquarello’s eyes adjusted, he saw two men standing above him.

“Get dressed,” they told him.

“They woke me up at 4 o’clock in the morning, two police officers,” Pasquarello said. “They took me all the way to Utah. It was a complete surprise. I didn’t know they were coming. No one did, except for my parents.”

Before he knew it, Pasquarello was spending the rest of the summer of 2008 at a rehabilitation center in Utah. His life was turned upside down for the better part of two years as he fought to recover from personal anguish and substance abuse.

Now a senior at Neshannock High School, Pasquarello’s return to the place he once called home is quite miraculous. He is now one of the best players on the Lancers football team. And, more important, after 18 months of seminars, heart-to-hearts, soul searching and full-blown rehabilitation, he’s a better person.

Just ask Neshannock coach Pat Cuba. Someone who once watched Pasquarello quit the team now says he is the heart and soul of the Lancers, someone other players admire and look to for leadership.

“When you see him play, you say, ‘I want to play like him. I want to play hard because he’s playing hard,’ ” Cuba said. “We have some other leaders on the team, don’t get me wrong, but he keeps the flow going. He’s a positive person and he’s a positive influence. He doesn’t tell you how good he is, he goes out and shows you how good he is. That’s what I love about him.”

TURNING POINT

Those characteristics were nowhere to be found in Leo Pasquarello a few years ago. They were lost in an abyss of drugs, alcohol and the depression of watching his younger brother struggle through the effects of a terminal illness.

His parents, Mary and Joe, no longer could sit back and watch their son fall deeper into trouble. Even Leo admits he was on a path of destruction. Aside from smoking weed, drinking and taking pills, he was picking fights, lying to those closest to him and, simply put, falling apart.

“I was in Krause Youth Shelter twice,” Leo said. “I got out of Krause one day and I was in it the next day.”

Pasquarello’s parents finally had had enough, and they arranged for him to go to a clinic in Utah. That decision took a long time for Mary and Joe to accept, but after several attempts to sit down and talk to Leo failed, they decided a different type of intervention was needed.

“Sometimes you have to remove someone from the area for them to see how much trouble they’re causing,” Mary said. “We didn’t want it (the trouble) to affect his future, irreparably.”

It was a difficult time for the Pasquarellos. The youngest son, Benny, has a condition known as Sanfilippo Syndrome, a terminally ill disease that makes the body unable to break down sugar molecules. The condition becomes progressively worse, and eventually, the central nervous system begins to fail, Mary said. There is no cure for Sanfilippo Syndrome and the average life expectancy is 14 years, Joe said. Benny is 16, but he is enduring the most severe part of the disease right now. He hasn’t talked since April of 2003, he eats through a feeding tube and, late last week, the Pasquarellos weren’t sure if he would make it through the weekend.

“They hit a point where they start to regress, and that’s where he’s at now,” Mary said.

LIFE IN UTAH

Benny’s condition made the decision to send Leo to Utah even more difficult. Leo, just 15 at the time, said the first few weeks away from home were miserable. Feeling betrayed by his family and in a place that felt more like a prison than a rehabilitation center, he became frustrated. He didn’t talk to his parents for months and refused to abide by what he felt were an absurd amount of rules at the facility.

Leo said patients weren’t allowed to swear or use any type of slang. They couldn’t crack their knuckles or go to the bathroom without permission. If they broke a guideline, they received a demerit and lost points, which was what ultimately led to someone staying or being released. The more points a person accumulated, the higher level they moved up. When a person reached Level Six, they were allowed to be released.

As Leo said, reaching that point was easier said than done.

“The rules were the hardest thing to get used to,” he said. “If I cuss, and no one heard me, that’s still breaking a rule, and I have to get my demerits, even though nobody heard me. It’s on you. That’s your own integrity.”

Patients also were told when to go to bed and when to wake up. Their meals were served at a specific time every day. Meetings begin right on time, and being late or missing was a serious penalty. Everything, from morning to night, was done in order.

“You get taken out of real life,” Leo said. “It’s not even real in there. It seems like you’re not even living, really. You get put into this environment where you’re not in contact with regular people ... we called them regular people. You’re sheltered from everything — you can’t go out, you can’t do nothing. Everything is structured.”

As time passed, Leo began to understand the logic of the center and the point the staff was trying to get across. He said he was in meetings for more than 10 hours at a time, revealing secrets he hoped he would never have to divulge. He told stories of the trouble he caused, the fights he started and the drugs and alcohol he used. As he discussed the trials and tribulations of his youth — several of his problems started as early as junior high — he discovered how devastating his choices were to his family.

That’s when he began to clean up his act.

“Once I started to get my conscious back and actually started to have those feelings, that’s when I started to become clean in the program — started following the rules to go up in my levels so I could go home and get out of there. You become such a stronger person from there,” Pasquarello said of the center.

“Even now, when I mess up, I can’t lie to my parents. I’ve got to tell my mom everything I do — I’ve got to. I’ll take the consequences from it. I’ll get yelled at, get grounded or whatever, but my conscious isn’t letting me mess up. Because, say I start lying to my mom and not telling her the things I’m doing, that’s when I’m going to start slipping and following the same pattern I was before I got into the program.”

A FRESH START

Going back down that path isn’t an option for Pasquarello, which is part of the reason he joined the football team and enlisted in the Marine Corps when he left the rehabilitation program in December of 2009. Leo said he began to crave the structured lifestyle that was demanded of him in Utah. Football brought some of that order back into his life. Practices begin at a specific time every day and are organized from start to finish. If someone’s late, they’re punished. If they don’t listen, they’re demoted. It was the discipline he needed in his life.

But before he could become a part of the Lancers team, his father said Leo had to ask Cuba for a bit of forgiveness.

“I met him when he was in ninth grade,” Cuba said of Leo, who moved to Neshannock from New Castle just prior to his freshman year. “The first time I saw him I said, ‘He’s going to be a difference maker.’ He could catch, he could run and he had a great attitude. He showed up, and then one day he just stopped. He got himself into trouble and I never saw him again.”

Until this summer, that is, when Leo decided to play football instead of keeping a part-time job.

“He said he wanted another chance, that he’d changed and he wanted to know if I’d be willing to give him another shot,” Cuba recalled. “He was very mature in the way he handled it. And I said, ‘If you’ve changed, I’d love to have you.’ ”

A LEADING LANCER

Things have taken off since that day. Pasquarello, a running back/safety, leads the 3-3 Lancers in rushing with 272 yards and two touchdowns on 43 carries. He also is one of their leading tacklers and plays with a ferocity on defense that Cuba couldn’t stop talking about. While intense and brutal on the field, Pasquarello also emits good sportsmanship and a modest attitude, a trait he learned from his father.

“My dad always taught me to be humble,” Leo said. “Say you run somebody over, you help them up because they might run you over the next play. Even at the end of the game, when you go slap hands, some games people will give you a hug just because you helped them up or because of how you run. It’s a good feeling.”

Through all of the ups and downs, there’s been one constant in Leo’s mind: Benny, “the biggest inspiration of my life.” He’s dedicated games to his brother, who’s just a year younger, and said he’s what motivates him to play the way he does.

On the other hand, Leo said Benny’s condition was a big reason he was out causing trouble instead of being at home. Watching someone he cares for suffer was painful, Leo reflected, and it caused a helpless feeling.

“It hurt me to see him how he was,” he said. “It was selfish on my part not to be home with him, but in my head, I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I just didn’t want to be around it. That’s one of the biggest things I worked on in the program, was my brother. I talked about it during seminars, and I got feedback. My therapist went over a bunch of things with me about it.

“It’s sad to see how bad he’s struggling right now. He used to talk, and to see where he is now, where he doesn’t move, he can’t talk, you don’t know if he’s really understanding what you say, he can’t eat, he can’t go to the bathroom. But he’s a big inspiration — the biggest inspiration of my life.

“He’ll die and go to heaven and be an angel. That’s something me and my family believe. He’s the purest person you can find on this earth just because he hasn’t experienced sin. He’s a fighter. ”

It must run in the family.