Step Up Your Tomato game

Body and balance

While many high school students were partying, Nick Chamberlain earned his black belt.

What started as a hobby soon became an obsession and a career that provided him with an identity, a culture and a family.

Chamberlain joined karate at age 15, shortly after moving to Boston from England because he didn’t know any other American sport. He liked that karate let him determine his own success.

“I enjoyed sports where you could make the difference yourself,” he says. “Karate is an individual sport. If you want to get better, you have to work harder.”

Once he started karate, it was “consuming,” he says. “I spent two or three hours most nights of the week at the karate studio, doing classes and private lessons, train- ing with the other guys.”

Chamberlain started assisting the teachers long before he got his black belt. When he graduated high school he was faced with a decision of what to do next: he could go to school to study business or launch a karate studio.

He decided to continue teaching karate, so his parents sold their home and helped him open a franchise martial arts school.

“That’s how I got started,” he says, but he continued to search for new opportunities as well. He considered law school but then quickly became disenchanted with the idea when he realized practicing law wouldn’t afford him the work-life balance he wanted.

“I knew several attorneys who were working 80-90 hours a week, and their families thought they were the guy who came over on Sundays to play baseball,” he quips. “I had two dads who brought their kids to karate — everyone else was brought by their moms. I asked those guys, ‘What do you do that allows you to bring your kids to karate?’ Both of them were chiropractors.”

So that settled it. He moved to Dallas to study chiropractic care, and he continued to study and teach martial arts to pay his way through school. He founded Chamberlain Studios of Self Defense in Lakewood, and today he teaches hundreds of kids and adults in East Dallas.

Through his education, he met Kimberly Jones, who was also studying chiropractic care in Dallas. They married shortly after graduation. While both sought a life that

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TX put family first, they were disheartened to learn that family would be difficult to build.

“We tried to have kids,” Chamberlain says. “We didn’t take extraordinary measures like going through IVF and all that, but we tried for a few years and it didn’t work out.”

Although martial arts doesn’t take the place of family, it helped fill the void in some way because “having time and family and community and all those things was important,” he points out.

“We’ve created a martial arts family where everyone cares about each other and cares about the success of others. I run the school as a family community,” he explains, and then jokingly adds, “and it is nice to work with some really cute kids and then send them home.”

In his studio he teaches Kenpo, a version of mixed martial arts, but over the years he has trained in various forms of martial arts. Last year Chamberlain received designation as Grand Master and the rank of 10th degree black belt at the Kenpo International Hall of Fame.

“That’s the beauty of martial arts. In most sports, once you hit your 30s or 40s you’re done, you retire,” he explains. “Whereas in the martial arts, as you get older, people are like, ‘Oh you must really be good. You must really know what you’re doing.’ You get wiser. You can keep practicing as long as you want.”

It has given him an opportunity to travel and learn by immersing himself in other cultures from Hawaii to China. He also realized more and more how much he loves teaching and helping people, and how much his work with martial arts spills over into his work as a chiropractor.

“For me being a doctor is the same,” he says. “It’s teaching people about diet, nutrition, stress-reduction and exercise routines. It’s very closely tied to the physical work you do in the martial arts. There’s a crossover.”

He and Kimberly both practice chiropractic care in a room above Chamberlain’s martial arts studio in Lakewood.

Fighting for his life

By Elizabeth Barbee

Though he’s only 5-feet-5, Jesús Chávez is known in certain circles as “El Matador” or “The Killer.” It’s an appropriate name for a boxer, especially one of his caliber. During Chávez’s career as a lightweight fighter, he won 44 of 52 matches and garnered two world titles. But his rise to glory was far from smooth.

In the summer of 1990, when Chávez was 16 years old, he was arrested for armed robbery. He says he was an accomplice mixed up in the wrong crowd. It was his first offense, but he spent the next four years behind bars.

“When I was there I swore I was never going back to a prison or a jail cell,” he says. “But I knew about my immigration problem.”

The “problem” was that Chávez’s family moved from Chihuahua, Mexico to the United States when he was a child. They had been granted amnesty, but Chávez’s arrest meant he’d violated the terms of his immigration status. At the end of his sentence, he was immediately deported.

“There I was, with $50 in my pocket, in a place where I had never been — Mexico City,” he remembers. “I basically hitchhiked my way back to Chihuahua and lived with

Abdominal Pain

Back Injury

Breathing Problems

Chest Pain

Dehydration

Dizziness

Eye Injuries

Head Injuries

Major Burns

Stroke Like Symptoms

Allergies

Allergic Reactions

Bites

Colds and Coughs

Cuts

Earaches

Fevers

Flu

Sore Throat Rashes my grandparents.”

Mexico was unfamiliar to Chávez. The United States was the only home he knew. After a couple months he “walked straight through the line,” boarded a plane and flew to Illinois. He says it was easy, probably because his English was perfect.

Chicago proved difficult. Chávez got calls from former friends who had become bad influences. Not wanting to get embroiled back in crime, he decided to move, at the suggestion of his father, to Austin, Texas.

It was there that he met Richard Lord, who owned a local boxing gym. Lord recognized Chávez’s talent and let him train and live in the facility. Pretty soon he had a promoter and was fighting against some of the biggest names in the industry.

But then he applied for a driver’s license.

“I didn’t have the right documentation,” he explains. “The only reason they didn’t deport me right away was I had a major promotional contract in the US so I was conducting business here.”

Eventually, Chávez voluntarily deported himself. He figured he’d be in Mexico for six months tops. He was there for four years. During that time, he prepared for a fight against Julio Alvarez, one of Mexico’s top boxers. The men were friends but things turned ugly before the fight.

“His supporters paid off the chef where I used to eat,” Chávez says. “I was getting stomachaches and had to postpone the fight.… They were putting barbiturates in my food.”

The foul play was documented in “Split Decision,” a 2002 film that chronicles

Chávez’s struggle to return to the United States.

“I agreed to do [the documentary] for educational purposes,” he explains. “It’s educational for a lot of different people, like atrisk kids, and it has a lot of good information regarding immigration law.”

Chávez won his match against Alvarez. He says it was the only time in his career he was “intentionally trying to hurt someone in the sport of boxing.”

Then, in 2001, he secured an even greater victory. With the help of his attorney, he was allowed to return to Austin — this time, legally.

After four years of relative peace, his world would come crashing down again.

On Sept. 17, 2005 he fought Leavander Johnson, for the lightweight world title.

Chávez won. But after leaving the ring, Johnson collapsed in the locker room, and later died from a brain injury received during the fight.

“I felt horrible,” Chávez says, tearing up. “I blamed myself for a long time. The only people who could help me get out of that rut were [Leavander’s] family. They asked me to come to the funeral. I agreed and I flew out there. They understood the risks and they said, ‘Keep fighting. Do it for Leavander.’”

Chávez kept fighting another four years, but he also began exploring other interests. He volunteered with the Austin Police Department, teaching boxing to at-risk kids, and developed a passion for social work. In 2010, he met Arnie Verbeek, who owns Maple Avenue Boxing Gym, off Inwood Road. The two became close.

Verbeek offered Chávez a job managing the facility, so he moved to East Dallas. That’s how he discovered Café Momentum, a nonprofit restaurant that provides culinary training to teens who have served time in juvenile detention facilities. Chávez couldn’t resist putting in an application. He was hired immediately and now works as a case manager.

“The kids I work with are all really good kids in bad situations,” he says. “They ask me about my past. Some have seen the documentary and it’s interesting to them. They say, ‘You must have made a lot of money.’ They think I’m rich.”

Chávez tells them he’s experienced extreme highs and extreme lows and advises them to stay out of trouble and pursue their passions. He can’t imagine where he’d be without boxing.

“After all of the hardship — the incarceration, the deportation — I know I was great at something,” he says. “I was one of the best in the world. Not many people can say that. I’m proud. Now I’m a social worker and I’m proud of that too. I’m giving back.”