What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Samples had relapses after leaving the House of Isaiah--he celebrated two years of sobriety on December 4--but that's the nature of addiction. For the most part, however, his stay at the ranch did the trick. And now, to some, he's an expert, the guy who can show everyone else the way.

"It's been made obvious to me that they're wanting to get my input on what worked for me, or what I think works," he says. "And when I say what worked for me, that's my opinion. I can only tell you, from my experiences, I had to be taken out of my environment for a long period of time to debrief all these things that were in my mind and re-establish some life skills and stuff."

Of course, you can't ship every homeless person, every seemingly hopeless addict out to the sticks and hope they come back as legitimate contributors to society. Samples is a unique case. They all are. But if the city can build the right kind of shelter and put enough money behind it to make it go, some believe that would work almost as well. Sturrock sees Samples--with his personality, his photographs, his past--as a lightning rod for this enterprise, a focal point that will open up wallets and minds.

"You can talk about all the people in Dallas and what we should do, but it's person on person," she says. "You know, we need to get to the heart and the soul of the people here, whether they give a shoe or a meal or they adopt a room at this new shelter. I've had very philanthropic people who I've spoken to, and they said, 'What's it gonna cost? Come back with a piece of real estate and a plan, and I will assist you in this endeavor.'

"Now, they could build another auditorium or another place to put art--they can, and they probably will--but they want to make a difference. And the difference in Dallas, Texas, is the homeless. It's not building parks. It's not Wal-Mart coming in and building a grocery store. It's not building another huge building. To make a difference in Dallas, Texas, today is [dealing with] the homeless problem. So how do we approach that? How do you tell the citizens of Dallas that they need to step forward and make a difference?

"Through Hal."

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Samples knows what people think when they hear him talk about Hero to Zero. Shouldn't it be Zero to Hero? The other way, the way he has it, is just not very uplifting. Must be some mistake. They don't know where it comes from, what it means to him. They don't know that his life, at least part of it, is summed up by those three words. In that order.

"Hero to zero" was a phrase he used around the office at Prestige Ford, where he was a high-rolling salesman for almost a decade. At the time, he was referring to the monthly sales figures: "Last month's hero, this month's zero," he says. "At the end of the month, you start all over. Everyone's at the bottom." It took on a new meaning a few years later.

He was at the bottom when he started at Prestige in 1989--washing cars, watching the salesmen work the lot in their sharp suits and leave for the day in spotless cars. Samples wanted to be one of those guys: "I figured that would be a way to earn my status," he says. It didn't take him long. He was still a teenager when owner Jerry Reynolds put him on the sales floor.

"I've always had a certain sympathy for kids that work with the wash rag," says Reynolds, who started out washing cars in 1973. "It's a tough job; it's hard to wash cars when it's 110 degrees, or when it's 20 degrees. I just saw something in him that reminded me of me. I just sort of took him under my wing. He had more natural talent for this business than anyone I'd ever seen."

Prestige's general manager, Charlie Nixon, says Samples was a natural salesman, an instant hit. He was breaking sales records as quickly as he could set them. His first month on the floor he made salesman of the month. Ford included a feature on him and his sales technique in the company magazine, and he was profiled in the Dallas Times-Herald. He had a hot car, a hotter girlfriend and a money clip stuffed with hundreds. Before he was old enough to drink--legally--he had more money than he knew what to do with. That didn't last long.

He was making 10 to 12 thousand a month, partying harder by the day, because, really, what were they going to do--fire him?

By the time he was 25, he had a desk job in the finance department at Prestige, bringing in $150,000 a year, and although he was working 80 hours a week, his world really revolved around drugs and alcohol. In 1998, he picked up his third DUI. So he partied harder.

"I had a real strong addictive personality," Samples says. "I had a cocktail box, with your trazodones and your methamphetamines and the beers I'd have in the shower before I'd start my day. I'd hide 'em behind the towels underneath the bathroom sink. After a while, I'd forget where I was at."