Dean LaTourrette's profile on David Eggers ran in the October 2007 issue of Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited. 

David Eggers is anxious. Just yards from the water, longboard in hand, he stops short and gazes out at the lineup at WindanSea in La Jolla, his old stomping grounds. It’s been years since he’s surfed here, surfed at all for that matter, and decades since he tore the place apart as a grom.

I look over at him and ask if he’s ready, but he isn’t listening—he’s too consumed by the surreal nature of the moment. I jump in the water and begin paddling, but Eggers doesn’t follow. About 20 yards offshore, I look back to see him still standing on the beach with the board under his arm, staring out at the ocean, a look of trepidation on his face. He doesn’t want to go into the water.

Reluctantly, he finally drags the 9’0″ Stewart into the shallows (

) and wades through the shorebreak, as though afraid to get wet. He eases himself onto the board and begins paddling methodically out toward the peak. I’m no longer sure that bringing him back here was a good idea.

Whatever is going through Eggers’ head—and it is likely a lot—suddenly gets pushed aside as a wide swinging right rolls past me and directly at him. He whips the board around and forcefully paddles into the sloping wall. His aggressiveness startles me; what hesitation there was has been replaced by pure instinct, and just like that, Eggers is up and riding in perfect trim, backside, and he milks the wave all the way to the beach before kicking out.

You remember David Eggers: child prodigy in the 80s, freakish talent, one of the greatest amateur surfing records ever, turned pro at 16, touted as the next world champion, and so forth. He was truly the Golden Child, as he was then dubbed, the Grom Who Would Be King. But by age 17, he had already dropped off the pro tour and begun a downward spiral of drug abuse, mental illness, and chaos that he wouldn’t emerge from for over 15 years. Once the poster child of the modern pro surfing movement, Eggers quickly became the symbol of the pitfalls of child surf stardom.

Today, having gone from prodigy to substance abuser to religious zealot, he's a 37-year-old recovering addict just trying to get by. “I’m clean and sober now, have been for three-and-a-half years,” he says. “I want people to know that. I’m just living my life now.”

Eggers was born in Mountain View, California, in 1970, but a year later his parents, Jim and Patti, moved the family back to San Diego, where they both had gone to high school. They settled in Clairemont, then a mostly blue-collar neighborhood about three miles inland from Pacific Beach. Jim was a self-proclaimed greaser, into cars and motorcycles, while his wife, Patti, was a beach girl, having grown up on the shores of Pacific Beach.

Jim Eggers, aka Captain Jim, was a tuna boat captain who spent the better part of four months a year out at sea, which left David’s mom, Patti, who worked full time as a beautician, at home with their three kids—Scott, Tim, and David. While Tim took after their father and his interests in motorsports, Scott and little brother David gravitated toward the ocean. “The beach was our day care,” says Scott today. “My mom used to drop us off early in the morning and pick us up at dusk.”

Patti wasn’t much of a disciplinarian (and a bit of an anarchist according to the kids), which left Scott and David to run wild around the neighborhood. The Clairemont Surf Shop was down the street from their house, and the two used to ride their skateboards there and hang out. “I remember when Scott first walked into my shop with his skateboard,” says Jeff Le Maitre, then the shop manager, who would become a seminal figure in both Scott and David’s lives. “I think he was just 10 or 11, and his eyes were all red—he was stoned out of his mind. I was like, ‘You kids need something else to do.’”

That something else became surfing, as Le Maitre started taking the two brothers to the beach, first getting Scott into the water. David, four years Scott’s junior, would soon follow. “David would tag along,” says Le Maitre, “always trying to keep up with his big brother. That influenced a lot of what he did.” In typical sibling fashion, Scott didn’t make things easy for his younger brother. “I think surfing was really good for David’s self-esteem,” says Le Maitre. “Scott and his friends were pretty hard on him. I think it really fueled David, that was how he got back at Scott, by surfing better.”

It didn’t take long for David's extraordinary talent to emerge. Le Maitre recalls an early day at Torrey Pines: “We watched him take off late on this wave and then disappear as the wave went inside us. We were sure he ate it. Then out of nowhere his board comes flying up, and he does this huge lip carve and throws spray. He’d been surfing maybe a month at that point. As soon as I saw that, I thought, ‘This kid is a natural.’”

Things accelerated quickly from there. David surfed his first contest at age 10, a WSA contest at Blacks. He made the finals and placed sixth in the 15-and-under bracket, which began a five-year amateur contest tear that to this day has rarely been rivaled.

A then little-known shaper for Canyon Surfboards named Rusty Preisendorfer began making boards for both David and Scott. “David was just this skinny, freckly little surf rat,” says Rusty today. “He was just 10, but I could see he had a lot of potential.”

David’s father, who had grown up in Tennessee and North Carolina, at first wasn’t a big fan of his two sons surfing. He liked hot rods, hunting, and fishing and thought surfers were mostly bums. When David began doing well in contests, however, Jim and the Eggers family took interest. “My dad became the original Little League dad for surfing,” says Scott. 

The family would travel up and down the coast by motorhome, going from contest to contest, where both David and Scott would compete in WSA and NSSA events. “We wore that Winnebago out,” Jim says today. “We really got involved.”

Some have accused the family of pushing David too hard at an early age. “I think his parents’ intentions were good, but in my opinion it wasn’t the right environment,” says Peter Townend, who along with Ian Cairns was then coach of the NSSA. “We just didn’t have that in surfing yet, it hadn’t gotten to that point. You see a lot more of it today, there’s an obvious Little League syndrome in surfing now because kids are making lots of money at a young age.”

Others disagree on the family involvement. “That whole contest thing, I think that really united the Eggers family,” says Le Maitre. “They would pack up the Winnebago and all go camp out at the contest sites. I think it was a great thing for them.”

Eggers was a competitive machine almost from the very beginning, often disposing of surfers many years his senior. In one particularly memorable contest, the 1981 G&S San Diego Surf Classic, 11-year-old Eggers placed third, the only amateur to make the finals. To get there, he trounced former world champ Rabbit Bartholomew, who, at age 27, was still in the WCT top five. “That was really something,” Eggers says today. “Rabbit and his pal Chappy Jennings, turning to me on the beach afterward and yelling, ‘Fuck you!’”

David quickly became known as the Giant Killer. In addition to his exceptional talent, he was also fiercely competitive in the water, an attitude that rubbed some of his fellow surfers the wrong way. “He was vicious, man,” recalls Dino Andino, who often competed against Eggers. “There was a point when he was younger when he just beat everybody and everything.”

“I was a hassler,” Eggers admits. “I had some natural ability, but I also fought to get waves. Guys like Tom Curren, Kelly Slater, and some others were naturals who more or less free-surfed their heats. I wasn’t like that. I had to hassle to win.”

By 1985, Eggers had amassed a staggering competitive record. At the amateur level, he was virtually unbeatable. He had defeated surfers at all levels and age groups, from Rabbit Bartholomew to Kelly Slater. Eggers’  career arguably peaked that year when he won the overall U.S. Amateur Surfing Championships from within the boys’ division, defeating both Slater and Jeff Booth. “I think when he became the U.S. Champion, that’s when his ego got huge,” says Le Maitre. “From then on, David was putting on a show every time he paddled out.”

Eggers’ attitude shocked and angered fellow competitors. They weren’t thrilled to have some cocky Southern California kid get in their face and then beat them in heats. He also at times exhibited bizarre behavior. “He  was so weird about how he competed, it was almost evil,” says Andino, who was good friends with Eggers. “He’d paddle way out past us, put his arms up in the air, and yell and scream at the sky, and then all of a sudden a wave would come to him. Really weird shit.”

While David’s intensity fueled his competitive success, it also drove him toward extreme behavior. He was a wild child by all counts, and as a young San Diego grom without much parental supervision, he was exposed to a lot at an early age. Scott remembers his brother getting caught at school with pot as early as the first grade. “He always hung out with guys who were much older," says Scott. "He always had something to prove.”

At the beginning of 1986, having just turned 16, Eggers decided to turn professional. His parents backed his decision. “When he got into high school, we couldn’t keep David in class,” says his father, Jim. “He was surfing all the time, that’s all he wanted to do. He wanted to turn pro.”

His father, serving as David's manager, negotiated sponsorship deals with Gotcha, Body Glove, and Rusty, among others. Gotcha agreed to pay Eggers a salary while he was on tour. His parents, furthermore, went to the courts and had David emancipated, essentially giving him the authority to make decisions as an adult.

“I think his parents were really wrapped up in him winning," says Jeff Le Maitre. "They got caught up in it all. The sponsors started waving all this money and they forgot that Davis was just a high school sophomore.”

In a manner of months, Eggers was off and running on the pro tour, initially with good results. Gotcha and Body Glove featured him in full-page ads. Competitors feared him. Almost overnight, the Golden Child was a star. But underneath all the hype, Eggers’ life was already unraveling.

Sixteen and emotionally immature, he had problems coping with the rigors of tour life. “Back then, the pro tour was far less organized," Rusty Priesendorder says. "People were left to their own devices to get around. David ever had a mentor; I don’t think there was ever a voice of reason.”

It was a wild time, the go-go days of the '80s. The surf industry and pro tour were a bit of a free-for-all, and rebellious upstart Gotcha was at the forefront. Led by Martin Potter, known then as the Animal, and featuring young rebels like Matt Archbold and David Eggers, the Gotcha team pushed the envelope. This was Eggers’ new family while on tour. “Back then, the whole tour was partying and having a good time,” says Garth Tarlow, who traveled with Eggers that year and now serves as marketing director for O’Neill. “He was just a young kid right in the middle of it all.”

“David got a great opportunity when Gotcha signed him," says Peter Townend, "but the infrastructure wasn’t yet in place to protect him.”

Eggers’ attitude as an amateur, meanwhile, hadn’t won him any friends. Teammates and rivals alike regularly hazed him. He'd been ranked as high as #17 during his rookie year, but he dropped from there and finished the season at #36. Back home, not long after returning from the last event of the year, he decided to quit the tour.  “He was too young," says his father, Jim. "He got too much money, too much notoriety, the travel was too demanding, and he was too immature to handle it.”

Eggars partied for the better part of the next several years, mostly in La Jolla. “He and his friends would go out all night,” says Jim. “The drugs and the alcohol started to take their toll." Drinking and freebase binges became common, as he partied with a fast crowd. “I terrorized La Jolla with the boys; we tore up that town,” he says. “Driving 100 MPH down Nautilus Street at 3 a.m., throwing beer bottles out of the car window, smashing mailboxes. It was full on.”

La Jolla surf prodigy Richard Kenvin, who at the time was right in the thick of things, remembers the antics both in and out of the water. “When David came back, it was pretty bad. I mean, I knew what I was up to was bad, and hanging out with me for 48 hours getting loaded was not good.”

While Eggers was partying hard, he was also putting on performances in the water. His reckless style during that period remains the stuff of La Jolla legend. “He was doing some amazing things at that time [late '80s and early '90s] at Big Rock, at least when he’d get it together to surf,” says Kenvin. “David was taking off behind the rock, under the ledge and doing these crazy airdrops—and making it. I didn’t really see that kind of surfing, even in the pro ranks, until years later.”

Eggers’ behavior in the water though became increasingly aggressive, almost manic at times. “He’d be out in the water just screaming, his face beet red," says John Bowling, who grew up surfing the La Jolla reefs. "He’d paddle out and guys would just paddle in, they couldn’t deal with it. But David could walk on water—he was an amazing surfer.”

Eggers oscillated between long periods of hardcore partying and brief stints of sobriety. He went through a religious phase that saw him seek help from friends, including fellow Windansea son Peter King. “I found solace in some of the people and the environment at that time,” Eggers says about his involvement with the church. “I made friends there; I found a lot of good people.”

But it never stuck, and each time he fell off the wagon, things got worse. Eggers says the low point came in his late 20s, during a six-month stint that saw him smoking heroin daily, along with continued freebasing. “My thinking was, yesterday was gone, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, and all we cared about was the here and now. We went as hard as we possibly could, and didn’t much care if we lived or died.”

Eggers’ behavior, going back to his pre-teen years, had always bordered on the bizarre. While some claimed it was simply part of his hyper-competitive nature, others sensed there were deeper problems. His behavior became increasingly erratic, both on and off the substances. His brother Scott recalls times when they and their friends would party all night, and David would get increasingly paranoid as the hours passed. At one point, Scott remembers David hiding under the bed, thinking there were helicopters coming to get him. Scott and his friends dismissed the paranoia as just a reaction to the heavy drug use.

Everything changed one afternoon in the mid-'90s, when Jim Eggers came home to find his son in the garage, lying on top of the washing machine. He'd put tennis shoes in the dryer, and they were making an incredible racket. David said he was trying to drown out the voices inside his head.

Eggers was diagnosed as schizophrenic and spent a month in the hospital. Back home, he at first refused to stay on his medication, and things fell apart again. As is often the case, his recovery happened in stages. Getting the mental illness under control was key, and that meant staying on his meds. As for substance abuse, he kicked the heroin via methadone, calling it the hardest thing he’s ever done. “That’s when I truly knew what pain was,” he says. When Jim Eggers father moved from San Diego to the Salton Sea, Eggers began spending more time there, away from the temptations of La Jolla. The seminal moment, however, came in 2003 when his mother passed away due to alcoholism.

“We were pretty close when I was younger,” he says. “She was an enduring mom, and we put her through a lot, but she never gave up on us.” Eggers sought to honor his mother and change his life. At the same time, his father also gave him an ultimatum: Sober up and come live with him, or hit the road.

“I think if it wasn’t for the schizophrenia, David would be living in La Jolla, working some normal job, and surfing,” says his father. “The mental health issues are probably why he’s not surfing today.”

David Eggers wasn't just a precursor to today’s child surf stars, he was a test case—almost an experiment. With no clear path to follow, he went out and suffered the pitfalls and exploitation that can befall a young athlete without much support. “He was an anomaly for his age then,” says Peter Townend, who now coaches the USA Junior Surf Team. “Back then it wasn’t like it is now. In those days there was him and that was it. I was just at the NSSA westerns last weekend. You should see the under 10 division. My god! I was barely thinking of surfing at that age, and these kids are just unbelievable already.”

Two teenage surfers today who epitomize this phenomenon are 13-year-old Kolohe Andino and 15-year-old John-John Florence, both of whom have been heavily marketed since their pre-teen years. “Some of these kids are making nearly six figures already,” says Townend. “It’s crazy.”

Dino Andino, Kolohe’s father, serves double duty as both parent and Billabong employee and worries about his son. “Kolohe is a fanatic, he thinks about surfing so much,” Dino says. “That concerns me, that he doesn’t have the balance. I think that’s my job, to try to create more balance. I always keep that in mind.”

Garth Tarlow, marketing director at O’Neill, claims they normally assign a chaperone to the younger surfers when traveling, and that the emphasis today is on keeping surfers amateurs until they’re age 18. In John-John’s case, his mother travels with him everywhere. But Tarlow admits that there are no hard and fast rules in place. “If Kolohe Andino so choses,” says Townend, one of his coaches, “he could go out today at age 13 and compete in the WQS and try to qualify for the WCT.”

Eggers lives with his father and stepmother, Barbara, at the Salton Sea, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, 100 miles inland of San Diego. He doesn’t have a driver’s license—he never has. Instead, he rides an electric bike to his father’s bar, Capt’n Jim’s, where he works each day. While the environment might seem an odd choice for a recovering addict, he’s kept it on the straight and narrow for almost four years. It’s hard to imagine a life that could be further away from surfing, both literally and metaphorically. This is by design. “I’m over the whole surf scene,” he says solemnly. “I’ve finally grown up. It’s taken me a while, but I’m more mature now.”

In many ways, Eggers does seem more mature. Recognizing his shortcomings, speaking with humility, he deconstructs his life with a critical eye. “I disappointed a lot of people who were trying to help me,” he laments. “I got caught up in the whole Southern California party scene, and for that I’m sorry.”

Watching Eggers talk to people at Capt'n Jim's, it’s difficult to imagine the brash young hellion he once was. “Everybody likes him here,” Jim tells me. “He goes and shoots pool and just hangs out.” It’s as if he’s become the sweet little kid he was never able to be—or perhaps was never allowed to be. “I feel like happy little David again,” he says, “and I’m not going to screw that up.”

But Eggers also shows glimpses of his old self, speaking as though in the present. “The breaks from Big Rock to Blacks, I own them,” he says. “Nobody takes off as deep as I do at Big Rock—nobody.” Just as quickly, he catches himself. “I mean, I 

 to own them,” he says sheepishly. His associations with the sport are clearly still painful. “I don’t really care about surfing or if I ever do it again,” he says. “I’m just glad to be happy again.”

For the most part, Eggers is living his life one day at a time. But he does have plans for the future. His goal is to reach five years of sobriety and then “flip the script”—help others avoid what he went through. “I’ve been through an incredible amount of pain,” he says emotionally, through tears. “But there is no shame or guilt anymore. My life can be used as a tool to save another. If it saves one little 13-year-old kid, then I’m happy. That’s my whole trip."

"A RECOKONING: CALIFORNIA'S GOLDEN BOY DAVID EGGERS HAD IT ALL—UNTIL HE DIDN'T," BY DEAN LATOURRETTE (2007)

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