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Don Hooton, seated in his home office in McKinney, stared off into the distance following the mention that 20 years have passed since his 17-year-old son, Taylor, hooked together two belts, affixed them to the back of his bedroom door and hanged himself.
“It’s impossible to believe,” Hooton said.
Taylor was two weeks from beginning his senior year at Plano West High School, preparing to make college visits with his father. On the morning of Tuesday, July 15, 2003, he left a note: “I love you guys. I’m sorry about everything.”
Police who arrived on the scene discovered anabolic steroids in Taylor’s bedroom. Don and his wife, Gwen, soon concluded that taking the unprescribed, illegal drugs caused the youngest of their three children to take his own life, given that depression is one of the side effects between cycles of anabolic steroid use.
Taylor had put on 25 pounds in the previous two months, more than a year after a suggestion was made to him and a teammate by a baseball coach that they should “get bigger” in order to make the varsity team when they moved up to Plano West. Taylor interpreted that suggestion as taking anabolic steroids. He did both orally and by injection beginning in January 2003, just before his junior baseball season.
Don Hooton came away from the tragedy determined to help other families avoid what his had endured, a call that came to him during his son’s wake.
He left his job in worldwide marketing for Hewlett-Packard and founded the nonprofit Taylor Hooton Foundation in February 2004. The foundation is still going strong all these years later. Don handed over daily operations in 2019 to son Donald Jr., who left a job in real estate in 2009 to join the foundation as a full-time employee. Don, 73, is now executive chairman; Donald, 42 and living in Colleyville, is president. The foundation’s most recent IRS Form 990, for the period ending December 2021, lists assets of $668,797 with Donald being the only officer receiving annual compensation, at $126,793. Educational programs have reached more than 2.5 million people in the U.S., Canada and Latin America, the foundation states.
Gwen has helped out with the foundation since its inception and left her teaching job in the Plano ISD in 2010. Foundation supporters have come to treasure her handwritten thank-you notes for even the smallest of donations. “That’s kind of my way of feeling I’m part of the foundation,” she said. “If someone takes the time to write a nice thank-you note, it’s very much appreciated.”
Mackenzie, the oldest of the Hooton siblings, was finishing a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh — near where the family lived before relocating to North Texas in 1999 — when Taylor died. She followed her mother into education and teaches in the Frisco ISD.
“What Don and the foundation have done, in conjunction with others, have been true leaders in this really important fight for clean and safe and healthy sport. And fair sport,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency since 2007 and a graduate of SMU’s Dedman School of Law. “If they weren’t there, it would be an entirely different world.”
“I’ve been chairman of other charities before,” said Pat Fox, a past Taylor Hooton Foundation chairman whose son, Andrew, played baseball with Taylor. “It takes something special for a family charity to get beyond five to seven years. These guys have something special, and uniquely, we’re still the only teller of the message 20 years out.”
According to figures provided by Don, donations from Major League Baseball and other sports affiliates account for 36% of the foundation’s revenue. Fundraising events, primarily the annual spring gala and the summer golf tournament, account for 33% and are selling out again after dipping during the pandemic. Donald and a small staff travel nationally giving educational sessions to groups that range from youth sports leagues and high school teams to rookies of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars.
“We’ve never had more on our schedule,” Don said. “Based on the feedback that Donald and them are getting from the programs, the message is probably being received better now than it was 20 years ago. And it was more sensational at the time.”
One of the foundation directors is Brian Cuban, brother of Dallas Mavericks governor Mark Cuban and the survivor of a suicide attempt in 2005 related to substance abuse.
One regular participant in the golf tournament is Pete Bain, who runs a side business called Juice Free Athletics from his home in Bonita Springs, Fla. Bain drove to last month’s event — almost 2,500 miles round-trip.
“I lost a few friends from [steroids], so that kind of gives me a push to want to do something,” Bain said.
Spotlight on steroids
Taylor’s suicide focused a spotlight on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs among high school students in North Texas, particularly athletes. During the next two years, The Dallas Morning News’ Gregg Jones and Gary Jacobson produced two series of reports detailing steroid use among multiple athletes at Plano West and Colleyville Heritage High. Chris Wash, a Plano West athlete then, recently told The News “a big group of us just at our school of all different sports, mostly baseball and football, took steroids.”
Weeks after Don began the foundation, he appeared on an episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes in March 2004 that began with the intro: “It’s been all over the news, athletes of all kinds, professional and amateur, accused of taking steroids to enhance their performance.”
As scrutiny of steroid use among major league baseball players mushroomed, Hooton gave impassioned testimony at a nationally televised congressional hearing in March 2005, which led to a business partnership between the foundation and Major League Baseball that began with a $1 million donation. (When commissioner Bud Selig initially phoned, Hooton assumed it was a crank call and hung up.) At the February 2009 media event during which Alex Rodriguez contradicted years of denials and admitted to using steroids, the three-time American League Most Valuable Player recognized Hooton during his remarks.
The Hootons have also determined the motivation for steroid use has grown well beyond athletes, to those seeking to improve body image, with growing interest among the gay and lesbian community. They cite a 2022 poll conducted by Good Housekeeping in which 17% of 4,250 respondents said they would trade years off their lives in exchange for having “the ideal body.” Three percent said they’d give up more than five years. The Hootons also cite a 2022 University of Michigan poll in which 64% of 1,653 responding parents of children ages 8-18 said their children are self-conscious about some aspect of their appearance.
“Our youth are being told what they should look like,” Donald said.
Body image likely played a part in Taylor’s suicide. A teammate, Billy Ajello, was quoted in The New York Times in November 2003 saying Taylor told him: “I’m not doing it for baseball. I’m doing it for myself.”
The Hootons have found updated data regarding the use of steroids by high school students. Their website shows 1 in 10 who were surveyed admitted to using the drugs — 13% of males, 8% of females.
They say organizations that once studied steroid use have turned their attention almost exclusively to opioids and fentanyl.
Jamie Reed, the Texas Rangers’ senior director of medical operations and long involved with the Hooton foundation, urges continued vigilance aimed toward the athletic community.
“The need for education is as great as it ever was with this ever-changing culture and climate in sports and NIL money,” Reed said. “It’s more incentive for high school athletes to get bigger, better, faster. I don’t think it’s going away.”
That’s also a huge fear of the Anti-Doping Agency’s Tygart, in part because of an NCAA testing program that he called “arcane and really needs to catch up with the times.” Among Tygart’s concerns with collegiate testing are having no blood testing — necessary for detecting human growth hormone, he said — an inadequate number of athletes tested and the absence of offseason testing.
The means for taking the substances has also changed, the Hootons say, not so much liquids that are injected and instead more often drinks or powders mixed into drinks.
“Our current mission statement now is enlightening the world to the truths about appearance- and performance-enhancing substances,” Donald said. In some studies, the familiar abbreviation of PED has been replaced by APED.
Early testing
Early on in the foundation’s existence, Don said he was encouraged by former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to back efforts to begin steroid testing of Texas high school athletes through the state governing body, the University Interscholastic League. Texas began testing soon after the state Legislature approved a one-year budget of $3 million in 2007 with the passage of “Taylor’s Law.” State associations in Florida, Illinois and New Jersey conducted similar testing around that time.
In hindsight, Hooton said, that amount of money for testing across a state the size of Texas wasn’t adequate for determining the amount of steroid use among high school athletes. He said the tests, in which design was outsourced, targeted substances that weren’t frequently used by high school athletes. Also, the protocol for the tests allowed for escape from detection. For instance, there was no direct observation of the collection of urine.
“On the bodybuilding (web)sites, the chatter was — these guys were laughing,” Donald said. “You’d have to be stupid to get busted.”
Positive tests never reached one-half of 1%. The state allocation was reduced to $1 million, then $650,000, which led to less testing. In 2015, the Legislature ended its funding of the program.
The perception was no problem existed; Don said the tests didn’t prove that.
“In hindsight, we made a mistake going down that road and got a black eye,” he said.
Florida and Illinois have likewise shut down their testing programs. New Jersey still tests, but it has always only tested athletes who qualify for state tournaments.
The foundation also transitioned away from trying to identify sources of steroid production and dealers. The Hootons were given the name of the person who was Taylor’s dealer, but legal efforts never produced even a charge. Don said the family was told by police that officers would have had to witness at least one of the dealer’s sales to Taylor for the case to advance.
Substance free
The foundation has featured a group of professional athletes called the All Me League who pledged to compete free of banned substances. C.J. Wilson and Elvis Andrus were active during their stints with the Rangers. Los Angeles Dodgers star Clayton Kershaw from Highland Park has been involved.
Among its earliest advisory members is Dillon Gee, a standout pitcher for Cleburne High (2003-04) and UT-Arlington (2005-07) who spent eight seasons in the majors. Most members were approached by major league club personnel and agreed to participate; Gee volunteered, while with the New York Mets, and remains active six years after pitching his last big-league game.
“I was never the most talented player on any of my teams — ever,” said Gee, now living in Aledo. “I got by on hard work and being mentally tough. It was always frustrating to know there are other people out there who are cheating the system and maybe grabbing a position that I could have had.”
After learning the Hootons’ story, Gee said, “It was just a super easy thing to get behind.”
Los Angeles Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon is one of the longer-tenured advisory board members among active major leaguers. The 2019 All-Star shares a story similar to Gee’s, being one of the smaller players on his teams at Houston’s Lamar High and Rice University (where he was college baseball’s player of the year in 2010).
“When you want to become an athlete or you want to become the next big star, when you’re at that age, you will do anything to get to that next level,” Rendon said. “And anything that looks like it’s going to give you a big jump right now, you really don’t know the detriment of it later on or the side effects. Whenever [the Hootons] have camps, I just hang out with those kids and educate them a little bit.”
There has been a latent detrimental side effect for Wash, the former Plano West athlete. He said he must receive weekly testosterone replacement therapy at age 37 — “a younger age than most men,” he said — because he abused steroids as a teenager.
The foundation enjoys a special relationship with the New York Yankees that developed soon after team president Randy Levine met Don following the congressional hearings.
“He really put a face and an exclamation point on the problem and the tragedy this causes families,” said Levine, “and that really moved me.”
On Sunday, Aug. 6, the Yankees will host the foundation for an annual fundraiser during a game against the Houston Astros. In the past, general manager Brian Cashman has come to the suite — sometimes more than once — to address the group.
The foundation has also become involved in Major League Baseball’s “PLAY” program — “Promoting a Lifetime of Activity for Youth.” Donald recently participated in PLAY events hosted by the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds.
Asked if the foundation achieved its goals, Don said, no, because steroids are still being improperly, illegally used.
“I don’t think that was ever a realistic dream,” he said. “I just thought we could have rallied the forces more than we have.”
“The foundation is a true tribute to Taylor and a true tribute to our faith,” Gwen said. “I tell Don, ‘This is not your foundation; it’s God foundation. And He’s gonna do it in His time.’
“I look at Donald and think about, I wonder what Taylor would be doing. How many kids would Taylor have?
“The hurt is still there. The pain’s still there. But it’s not as great as it was … 10 years ago. It’s never going to go away because a piece of my heart’s gone.”
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.