Mother of BMXer Scot Breithaupt talks son's last months

When he was home, the Godfather of BMX and his mom would eat breakfast and dinner together. They took turns preparing the meals and would vote on who did the best job.

"He always voted for himself, so he always won," Carole Breithaupt said.

Scot Breithaupt was a charmer, his mom said. The 57-year-old was a founder of bicycle motocross, a star racer, the creator of a SE Racing and a National BMX Hall of Fame member. He was the Michael Jordan of the biking industry and Carole's youngest son.

He was also an addict.

Saturday, his body was found in a homeless camp in Indio.

A new start

Before he moved into his mom's house in La Quinta in November, Scot was living in a mobile home in Long Beach. He told Carole her house would be a new start.

"But he wasn't changed," Carole said. "The talk was just different."

At that point, he was making his living selling autographed SE Racing caps and 8.5 by 11-inch posters. He wanted to buy his groceries himself, but he wasn't making enough money.

January 14, Carole took her son to sign up for food stamps.

"He wanted to feel like he was taking care of me," Carole said.

At 85, Carole's outfits are impeccably coordinated. She still goes out with the girls and is in such good health that she still models. In 1950, she was the first Miss Long Beach in the Miss Universe Contest and in June she modeled at a charity fashion show.

"I don't need taking care of," she said. "Scot needed to take care of me."

He always said the prayer before meals, ending it with, "Thank you, God, for my boys and my mom."

She adored Scot and said Scot adored her too. But he kept disappearing. For anywhere between a few days and a few weeks, Scot would walk off and not return any contact.

"I couldn't figure it out," Carole said. "I kept asking him and he'd say, 'I'm just around.'"

Sometimes at 11:30 p.m. or midnight or 2 a.m., she'd get a call asking her to come pick him up from some street corner.

In her red date book, Carole kept track of when Scot was home. She would schedule therapist and psychiatrist appointments for him but Scot always disappeared when the time came.

Scot also had a hip problem that pained him. On January 13, she wrote, "Scot's surgery?"

When he didn't show up, she wrote, "No."

She asked him about drug use. He would deny it.

"I don't like to say he was lying to me," Carole said. "He was trying to placate me."

But she knew. He sometimes would come back looking like he'd been on a cocaine bender: 20 pounds lighter and so hungry he'd eat everything in the kitchen before going to bed, she said.

He had been in and out of so many rehabilitations she said she can't even count them. A month in a clinic was nothing against his addiction, she said.

"The self-hate comes from truly wanting to do something and you just can't," Carole said.

Decades ago, Scot was the reason Carole quit smoking.

He bought her enrollment in a clinic in Pasadena. She actually hated that. She didn't want to drive all the way to Pasadena to quit something she enjoyed. Carole went to the clinic to demand they refund her son's money.

But as she was walking out, planning to never come back, Scot stood in the doorway with his arms stretched out.

"God, Mom, I'm so proud of you," she recalled him saying. He thought she had come to the clinic to quit.

Staring at her son with his arms out, Carole decided to quit that day. She looked at the pack of cigarettes sitting on the passenger seat of her car and has never wanted to smoke since.

"He had solutions to everybody's problems but his own," she said.

'What drugs do to you'

In a spotless ranch house with formal furniture, chandeliers and a tea set, Scot's room stood out as cluttered. He had a habit of keeping things like store receipts from a can of peanuts from four years ago mixed in with stacks of important papers, Carole said.

"But that's what drugs do to you," she said. "They make you a hoarder."

That's why it was such a big deal that Scot had spent the day before and the morning of June 8 cleaning his room.

He had been proud of how "perfect" the room looked, Carole said. The bed was neatly made with clean, bright blue sheets and a formal floral comforter.

Even now, the room is as he left it. Carole left his mail on the bed for him to open when he got back. She folded the tube socks and faded t-shirts she had washed for him in a pile near his pillows for him to put away.

That afternoon — Monday, June 8 — Carole went to her sister's house for coffee. She was gone for maybe 45 minutes.

When she got back, a while passed before she realized Scot might not have been in his room.

"Scot?" she called out.

There was no answer.

She called him every few days. It was 114 degrees and she was worried.

Still, no answer.

She drove around La Quinta, Indio and Coachella looking for him. "I figured he was acting like a homeless person," she said.

June 24, he sent her an email to check in.

And around 4:15 a.m. Sunday, a woman from the coroner's office rang her doorbell.

Police say Scot Breithaupt had been dead for an unknown amount of time before being discovered. The cause of death won't be released until after toxicology test results are released in six to eight weeks. Police say there were no obvious signs of foul play.

'C-ya,' a personal goodbye

Monday, Carole visited the vacant lot at the southwest corner of Las Palmas Road and Monroe Street in Indio where his body was found.

It was barren and sandy, with heaps of trash along graffitied walls and a shopping cart abandoned in the center. The tent where Scot's body was found — a shelter made of a bed frame, two twin box mattresses, a tarp and ratty blankets — still stood in the back corner.

Four other people were living in their own shelters when Carole visited.

"I just felt so sad for the homeless," she said.

Carole left a cross, some flowers and a photo so people could find Scot. She went again Wednesday to leave a posterboard signed "C-ya" — how Scot signed all his autographs.

"It's so hard for the family to look at what he has and had and go to where he was," she said.

Standing in his room Tuesday, Carole straightened out the already neat bed and talked about Scot: the addict, the Godfather of BMX, her son.

"Good, wonderful people that have so much to offer — the drugs just don't let them flourish," she said.

Opening a scrapbook she had printed of her life and family, Carole said, "This is my Scot."

She smiled at a black and white photo of Scot as a young man standing behind a racing bike with the front tire so busted out of shape it looks like a zig zag.

She flipped a few pages later to a picture of Scot smiling as a toddler at Christmas on "his first pair of wheels."

Scot Breithaupt was 57 when his body was found in that homeless camp.

"He'll be 58 on the fourteenth," Carole said.

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, July 18 at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church in Long Beach and are open to the public. There will be a bike ride following the services.

Emily Donovan reports local news for The Desert Sun. She can be contacted via email at Emily.Donovan@desertsun.com.