May-1987-
Track season junior year, at one of the major relay meets, it was announced the prior week that there was going to be a "clean and jerk weightlifting contest" sponsored by some guy I had never heard of. I of course was all excited, and trained that week on my technique.

As it turns out all it was, was a guy with some rubber mats and a Olympic barbell set in the middle of a grass field. I took second place with a lift of 265 lbs power cleaned to the chest and then pressed over my head. The kid who won was a senior and did 275. It was just sort of a "friendly" contest. I am 17 years old and in 11th grade.

July-1987-
It's summer time and I am training for football. I get a call from a coach I had never spoke to before, coach Himmel? Humle? Burle? I can't remember his exact name or his phone number but I do remember that he is from somewhere in Colorado. Anyway, he is the United States Power lifting team coach and he wants me to drop everything that I am doing and move to Colorado on a whims notice, to go train for the clean and jerk. I asked him in confusion why he was calling me, I finished second in the contest? He then says to me I finished second but the guy I lost to was a year older but more importantly he was also 50 pounds heavier. So pound for pound I was much stronger and as it turns out that in my age group and for my weight (17 years old and between 201 and 229 lbs.) I was ranked fifth in the country, in this one particular lift. This may seem like a dream come true for me, but let me tell you. Just like with anything you do, even if you really enjoy it, there can be things you really hate about it as well. The power clean and the clean and jerk were my absolute least favorite exercises. To be blunt, I loved working out but I despised those particular two exercises especially. This along with the fact that I could not just "get up and leave my mother." She was doing much better, but by no stretch of the imagination could her mental condition be considered to be "stable." I am 17 years old and about to enter the 12th grade and I do not go to Colorado to train for the U.S. power lifting team.

Aug-1987-
Football camp senior year, I test in the bench press 390 lbs, in the squat 505 lbs, and in the power clean 280 lbs. We finish the season 6-3 and are division champs. I begin working out again and I start to think about college.

Dec 1987-May 1988- My workouts continue very well. However I develop a "new idea". Now when I go through my workout mentally at night I have added a new "twist". When I am down on my "level" in my mind I have added a huge chair in the room in which I am standing. Using my Silva mind control I sit in the chair. On the left hand side of the chair are some "air hoses" like you would find in a auto garage. I imagine, that on both of my arms there are these "air hoses" coming out of my arms. Like an I-V hose coming out of your arm. This is my "pump up chair". In my mind I connect the hoses coming out of my arms to the hoses on the side of the chair. I push a button located on the right arm of the chair with my right index finger and the chair activates. Like an air station I can feel the vibrations as I sit in the chair. As I sit there I see my entire body start to swell. Like blowing up a balloon. I mentally tell my muscles to grow and swell like balloons, AND THEY DO! I do this for about six weeks.

This works so well that many of the parents and teachers think that I am now doing steroids. I am not, but the situation snow balls into some kind of "witch hunt" and they make me take a steroid test. What happened was as I am working out one day Father Jack (the local priest who is always hanging around the kids and the football team) comes into the weight room as I am working out. He says to me "Andy, there is a lot of talk about your steroid usage, and if you admit it to me right now every thing will be all right." "Father Jack" I said "I donít use steroids." He says "I'm going to ask you one more time to admit to using steroids." I look him right in the eye and I say "Look Father, I DON'T use steroids." And he got very angry and says to me and I will never forget this "Donít ever speak to me again you f*cking liar, they are going to hang you by you balls and I am going to be there to watch!"

A few days later Jeff Brown (one of the kids on the team) comes in to the weight room and tells me that Father Jack wants to see me at the grammar school as soon as I am done. When I finish my workout I go up to the school and Father Jack is waiting for me impatiently. He grabs my arm and I get brought in front of some kind of panel in the basement of the grade school located down the street. There are four members of the panel and the rest of the room is filled with teachers and parents. Dr. Purrizzo who is the chief orthopedic surgeon at valley hospital in Bergen county New Jersey. Bergen county is the third most affluent area in the country, and the towns of Saddle River and Ramsey are in the top towns in the country in terms of wealth. Dr. Purrizzo is a heavy heavy hitter in the area if you know what I mean. When President Nixon, who resided in Saddle River before he died, hurt his knee playing tennis Dr. Purrizzo was the surgeon who performed the operation, and for a while was on the Presidential list of referral surgeons. I am standing in front of the panel and he starts pressing me to "admit" that I am doing steroids. And I keep answering that "I DIDN'T DO IT!". He keeps pressing me saying that among the panel they hold seven PHDíS and he thinks they know what they are talking about so "make it easy on yourself and just admit it". And I keep telling them that "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU SAY AND I DON'T CARE WHO YOUR ARE AND WHAT YOUR CREDENTIALS ARE, I DIDN'T DO IT!" He tells me to take off my shirt to the show the acne on my back, but there is no acne. This sort of thing goes on for a while and he finally tells me to "take off your shorts or admit to doing steroids". What could I do, so I took off my shorts and I volunteered to give a urine sample. I had to piss in a cup in front of the panel as well as everyone else wearing only my sneakers. He is very pissed at me and does not give me my shorts back for quite a while. This whole time one of the other members of the board is Dr. Purrizzoís friend. He is a Psychologist and between the two of them they now start saying that they are going lock me up in for being mentally insane if I donít admit to taking steroids. And again I say "LOOK, I DIDN'T DO IT!". This goes on and on. I had gone through a whole defense proving that I didn't do it and no matter what I said and no matter what proof I presented I was going to be hanged whether I did it or not. Finally I say "Tell me how you know that I take steroids, what's your proof, do you have a camera in my house or something, how do you know?" Finally after much persuasion from the crowd and from myself reluctantly, he begins to explain that he has a degree in genetics, and that he has been studying my genetic code for years. He then goes on to explain how his son's genetic pattern is superior to mine in terms of dominate DNA markers. He had been doing a private "thesis" study showing how through superior genetic breeding and steroid usage he could create a superior human being. He had a test subject and a control subject.

His son was the test subject and I was the control subject. He had been injecting his own son with steroids for years and since his son's DNA pattern was superior to mine, his son, in theory, should have been more physically developed then me. And since he wasn't, Dr. Purrizzo's only explanation was that I must have been taking steroids as well, and he must prove that I was or else his life's work would have been wasted.

This was all a great theory, however the fatal flaw where he had made his mistake was that he had assumed that I was of Italian background because my last name is "Pero". So he was comparing my DNA patterns against the same ones he had used for his son who is Italian. He never bothered to ask if I was Italian, I am NOT. My background is Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech. This makes all the difference in the world, and I manage to get out of there unscathed.

When the test comes back, it is negative, and I tell all those involved that they can go "stick it where the sun doesn't shine." The whole episode is quite funny as I turned their "witch hunt" into a circus, especially my defensive strategy. For the rest of the school year all the people who were at the trial all gave me the dirtiest looks imaginable. All because I had the utter nerve to stand up for my self and say "I didnít do it!" This was Ramsey New Jersey, and the feeling in the air was that they didn't care if I was falsely accused they would not stand for a child talking to them in that manner.

It was all videotaped, and at one time there were several copies floating around. Anyway, as a result of this, I stop using this technique for the present time. But that was far from the end of Dr. Purrizzo. I am 18 years old and in the second half of my senior year of high school. This experience was very scary for the reason that I saw the "adult" world for what it really was. As a child you grow up believing that all adults are "all knowing" and are on top of things. But as I stood there and Dr. Purrizzo is telling me that if I did't admit to taking steroids that he was going to have me committed to a mental institution and have a lobotomy performed on me. As I looked around ALL the other adults just stood around like scared sheep. Not one of them said a word in my defense. This was the strangest feeling, seeing the adult world as a child for what it really was for the first time. I realized then that adults are exactly the same as the children, only they are bigger. There is one bully that runs the show, and everyone else just stands around scared to say anything. Just as they do as children.

Now and for the past several months college football recruiters have been in contact with me both by mail and personal visits as the selection process narrows. I should have been already "signed" by a major University. But since Hyman made me disappear from the college scouts for two years by not playing me. I had fallen out of the "Blue chip athlete loop" and I am now scrambling to find a school. I am talking to two or three smaller division two and division three schools as well as Penn State. Penn State had been where I wanted to go all along but Hyman was trying to cover for what he had been doing to me by lying to the Penn State coaching staff, sending them the wrong films, telling them different statistics things like that, because he didn't want to have to explain why I didn't play at all as a sophomore and hardly as a Junior. Finally he gets exposed, and Penn State offers me a scholarship for my first year and then a "full ride" after that. I was going to get free room and board, all I had to pay for was books and classes (an out of state student was going to be about $3000).

It is the track season, at the county track meet (the championship meet). I win the discus and set the county and state record with a throw of 167 feet and 11 inches. I finish second in the shot put with a throw of 57 feet and 3 inches. AT THIS MEET I VIVIDLY REMEMBER SEEING THE TWO MEN IN MILITARY UNIFORMS WATCHING ME. They were right there, for both events and watched me set the record.