[Mick]

My father-in-law's dad was a 6'5", 250 pound 15 year old and living about 50 km from Sarajevo when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated.  Not wanting his brobdingnagian 15-year old son conscripted into the army, his dad put him on his uncle's merchant ship and told his son "don't come back until the war is over." 
After two years, the now-17 year old was tired of the seafaring life (he'd been all over the world), landed in Los Angeles and became a prizefighter.  He won his first eight fights, then was supposed to take a dive in the ninth fight.  Either he didn't understand, or he didn't care, and KO'd his opponent with the first punch.  He gets back to the training room where his trainer says, "Nicu, we need to get out of town.  Here's two train tickets to San Francisco.  We're not getting off in either SF or SJ, the mob will be waiting for us."  So they looked on a map, saw "Palo Alto" in the middle and got off the train there.  Nick joined the Palo Alto Sheriff's department, where he became the guy who would be the first one breaking in a door at speakeasies in the Whiskey Gulch area.

So three funny things.  When I first heard this story, I heard it in front of an old retired Santa Clara County Sheriff named Chuck Prelsnik, who actually hired Nick.  During the conversation, I asked him "what were the qualifications to be a small town sheriff in America in the early 20th century?"  He replied "Pretty easy.  If you could take on four guys at once, you were the sheriff."

Second, I always thought the story was apocryphal...but then I cleaned out Nick's widow's garage and found his boxing gloves, boxing programs, old switchblades and rusted out guns he'd taken off of criminals, along with a lot of other items that validated the story completely. 

Third, his son (my father in law) ended up playing basketball for Stanford in the mid-1950s, and his daughter played lacrosse for Stanford in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Love those immigration stories.

[Mick]

My father-in-law's dad was a 6'5", 250 pound 15 year old and living about 50 km from Sarajevo when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated.  Not wanting his brobdingnagian 15-year old son conscripted into the army, his dad put him on his uncle's merchant ship and told his son "don't come back until the war is over." 
After two years, the now-17 year old was tired of the seafaring life (he'd been all over the world), landed in Los Angeles and became a prizefighter.  He won his first eight fights, then was supposed to take a dive in the ninth fight.  Either he didn't understand, or he didn't care, and KO'd his opponent with the first punch.  He gets back to the training room where his trainer says, "Nicu, we need to get out of town.  Here's two train tickets to San Francisco.  We're not getting off in either SF or SJ, the mob will be waiting for us."  So they looked on a map, saw "Palo Alto" in the middle and got off the train there.  Nick joined the Palo Alto Sheriff's department, where he became the guy who would be the first one breaking in a door at speakeasies in the Whiskey Gulch area.

So three funny things.  When I first heard this story, I heard it in front of an old retired Santa Clara County Sheriff named Chuck Prelsnik, who actually hired Nick.  During the conversation, I asked him "what were the qualifications to be a small town sheriff in America in the early 20th century?"  He replied "Pretty easy.  If you could take on four guys at once, you were the sheriff."

Second, I always thought the story was apocryphal...but then I cleaned out Nick's widow's garage and found his boxing gloves, boxing programs, old switchblades and rusted out guns he'd taken off of criminals, along with a lot of other items that validated the story completely. 

Third, his son (my father in law) ended up playing basketball for Stanford in the mid-1950s, and his daughter played lacrosse for Stanford in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Love those immigration stories.