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Regalado finds fresh start
Updated: September 29, 2011 10:28PM
When the alarm goes off at 5:30 or so, about the last thing Charlie Regalado wants to do is jump out of bed and get ready to head out the door for the 14-mile commute from the North Side down to the Woodlawn neighborhood.
But after all the Mount Carmel senior has been through in the last year or so, that grind seems like a small price to pay for the stability he’s gained. A few months after not knowing where he or his siblings would live with his parents both out of the picture, Regalado has found a safe haven with a pair of surrogate families.
He is living with best friend Luke Billhorn and playing football at Mount Carmel. Saturday afternoon, in a twist of fate, he and the Caravan will face Billhorn and Loyola in Wilmette in one of the most anticipated matchups of the season.
That makes for an interesting dynamic in the Billhorn household this week, but Regalado wouldn’t trade his life for anyone else’s right now.
“I think about that a lot,” he said. ‘‘ ‘Wow, is this really happening?’ I love this situation I’m in right now. I was overwhelmed. God really blessed me with this.”
Regalado is certainly in a better place now than he was last spring. He was used to being in a one-parent household — “I haven’t had my dad around since I was 2,” he said of his now-incarcerated father. But then the last week of his junior year at Gordon Tech, his mother was incarcerated as well.
Regalado had to grow up in a hurry and make decisions teens shouldn’t have to worry about, like where his three younger siblings (two sisters and one brother) would live and then what would happen to him.
“It was kind of hard for me to deal with all that,” he said. “I was in a lot of stress when all that was going on.”
A lot of kids would crack under that pressure, especially if they didn’t have the support system Regalado had with the Billhorn family. He and Luke Billhorn, now a backup quarterback for Loyola, met in fourth grade, becoming football teammates in the Welles Park youth program and then fast friends. It wasn’t unusual for Regalado to come over for dinner on the weekend and then stick around to watch the Bears on Sunday afternoon.
After Regalado set it up for his siblings to live with relatives, he moved on to sorting out his own affairs. It turned out to be an easy fix.
“There was never a question, when he came and told us what his situation was and he needed help, that he would move in,” said John Billhorn, Luke’s dad and an attorney who arranged to assume guardianship of Regalado along with his wife Jill.
Regalado’s fresh start also involved a move from Gordon Tech, where he had been a two-sport athlete and an all-conference pick in football as a sophomore, to Mount Carmel. Again, he was welcomed with open arms.
“I can’t put it into words,” he said. “When I first walked in there, I fit in perfect.”
And from that day when he joined the Caravan, Regalado knew the day would come when he and Luke Billhorn would be on opposite sidelines for one of the biggest games of the season.
“It’s been a lot less football talk,” Luke Billhorn said. “In the weeks before [this], we’d catch up on what practice has been like. Ever since the last game ended, we kind of looked at each other [and thought], ‘It’s different this weekend.’ ”
“As of [Sunday] evening as they were about to embark on game week, I felt just a little extra tension in the house,” John Billhorn said, half-joking. “If they’re going to be watching [game] films on the computer, they’ll be doing it in different rooms.”
But Luke Billhorn’s and Charlie Regalado’s lives, and those of their old grammar school friends, are still intertwined in so many ways. Many of their Welles Park teammates have developed into prep standouts, guys like Julian Russell and Habeeb Durojaiye at Gordon Tech — the team Loyola beat last weekend — and Marquese Martin-Hayes at Loyola.
And win or lose on Saturday, Regalado will be with his date at Loyola’s homecoming dance that night. “I know a lot of people from Loyola,” he said.
But none of those relationships have been more important than the one with the Billhorns.
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