Head of charity confesses to lying about how he lost his leg

Feb 27, 2010 — The Dallas Morning News

Tanya Eiserer

Feb. 27, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Amputee Craig Gavras has traveled America, drumming up support for an organization that raises money to buy artificial limbs for the needy. At times, he's shared his personal story: He lost his leg during a mob attack while working as a Dallas police officer.

But it's not true.

Gavras, who was never a police officer, said he plans to apologize today when he appears before about 500 people gathered for the Limbs For Life Foundation's ninth annual benefit gala at the Dallas Trade Mart.

"I don't know why I would lie about something like that," said Gavras, executive director of the Oklahoma City-based foundation. "I feel stupid. I feel bad for my family, my staff, my board, my patients. I don't want to see the foundation ruined."

Prosthetic limbs typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, and many insurance plans offer minimal coverage. Often, people don't have any insurance coverage at all.

Friends, board members, and several people who have gotten artificial limbs with the group's help say they support him regardless of his past stories because thousands of amputees now walk with artificial limbs as a result of his tireless work and relentless advocacy.

"It doesn't change what I know about Craig Gavras," said Doug Brooks, a board member and president and CEO of Dallas-based Brinker International. (NYSE:EAT) "He has changed hundreds and hundreds of lives."

In the 1980s, as a student at the University of Oklahoma, Gavras completed law enforcement-related internships, such as working for a probation and parole department.

But Gavras faced an uphill battle. By 1989, when the 23-year-old applied to be a police officer at the Dallas Police Department, he'd already undergone eight surgeries to his right knee and had his kneecap removed after injuring his leg while playing intramural sports in college.

Gavras thought he probably wouldn't get into the Dallas Police Academy, but a city doctor cleared him. His wife was pregnant at the time he started recruit training on May 24, 1989.

But six days later, while jogging around Bachman Lake during physical training, he stumbled and blew out his right knee.

He resigned from the academy on June 2.

Afterward, he completed his law enforcement bachelor's degree in Oklahoma. Doctors amputated his right leg just above the knee in December 1993.

Within a few years, Gavras had become a vocal advocate for the amputee community. With the help of John Sabolich, his prosthetist, Gavras formed the Limbs for Life Foundation in 1995. The organization works with a national network to buy artificial limbs for those that can't afford them. The group has two-full time staff members, including Gavras.

It has helped more than 10,000 amputees since its founding. The foundation also takes in donated parts of old limbs and uses those to build new limbs for people in seven developing countries.

More recently, his organization has been working on a project to help amputees in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

"If there wasn't an organization in place like Limbs for Life, then there would be zero help in place for people," Sabolich said.

When contacted by The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, Gavras initially declined to discuss how he had lost his leg. He said he did not know how the story about the line-of-duty attack and the story about his having been a Dallas police officer had made its way into news articles.

A biography on the organization's Web site as recently as Wednesday, which Gavras said he had not read previously, described him as having worked in Oklahoma as a "State Law Enforcement Officer before joining a major metropolitan police department. As a rookie officer, Craig was injured in the line of duty." The statement has since been removed.

In fact, Gavras was never a law officer.

"I've never been a licensed peace officer," he admitted. "I've never carried a gun."

In a follow-up interview, Gavras admitted that he had previously lied about how he became injured.

Looking back, Gavras recalls the first time he began to stretch the truth: It was about 1996, and while attending a scientific symposium on new technologies in prosthetics, he was introduced as an injured police officer. Someone asked him how he'd been injured.

"An accident in the academy just didn't sound glamorous," he said. "I was talking to a guy and I said I got injured while I was in law enforcement. He said, 'Well, did you get shot?' I said, 'No.' Then I said, 'I got beat by a group of people.' "

The story appeared in a news story the following day. He repeated it other times. But he says about seven years ago, he began telling people that he didn't want to talk about how he lost his leg. If someone pressed, he would tell them that he'd been injured on the job.

But Gavras never corrected the record when he saw the story repeated in newspapers. And he allowed his group's publicist to send out materials indicating that he'd been injured in the line of duty.

"It was a snowball effect," Gavras said. "I felt wrong, but I didn't know how to make it right. Once a lie snowballs, it's very hard. How stupid can a person be in this day and age? It doesn't take but three key strokes to figure out someone's past."

None of it changes what Gavras' foundation has done for Gary Roberts of Dallas.

Roberts, a 63-year-old real estate agent and diabetes patient, lost part of his left leg to gangrene in 2008. In just over six months, the organization had him up and walking again.

"With the amount of money those things cost, I wouldn't have been able to pay for one," Roberts said. "I don't care how he lost his leg. I know what it's like to lose one, and I know what he has personally done for me and his organization has done for me."

Now older and wiser at 43, Gavras still fears that his past lies will irreparably harm the foundation.

"The worst part about the whole thing is I wanted to be in law enforcement," Gavras said. "I knew I couldn't, but I found another job that I love helping people. And now, I've jeopardized that with something that a 10-year-old knows better than to do."

Newstex ID: KRTB-0046-42411330