Available Summer 2013!
Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1906s. Sun, surf, swanky sand castles along the Strand, and a soundtrack of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” But the hang-loose life of the locals would soon be drowned out and painted black. The social storm brewing could turn event the most perfect wave into a brutal riptide.
Karl McMillen, Jr. deserved a piece of the Pacific paradise. He’d plumbed his way up from screwfittings and sweat into mega-business ownership and multimillions. He’d earned the azure-awesome view that he woke to every magical morning. And he’d earned the ideal family at his side. A dynamic wife and two bright, talented sons with sky’s-the-limit potential.
But that storm…
He never saw it coming. It hit hard and it hit fast. The grinding gales of addiction ripped everything he had apart.
How do you go from planning exotic family vacations and evaluating real estate investments to planning prison visits and evaluating rehab centers and criminal defense pleases? How do you watch your surfer champion sons transform into drug lords? Inmates? How do you watch your entire family die; one by one?
And yet never stop fighting.
What does it take to look in the mirror and search for the meaning of enabler? To face that you’re sacrificing your own livelihood for Scotch? To ride a sheer, pounding wave of triumphs and tragedies, and then pull out and paddle back for more?
It takes a rare and special person – Karl McMillen.
“Triumphs and Tragedies: A True Story of Wealth and Addiction” chronicles top-of-the-world success juxtaposed against a downside of life no one should have to suffer. A side that proves that there are some things money can’t buy.
How Karl weathered his terrible tempest is a huge part of his story; but so is what he has done with that survival. How he has used his powerful wealth as ammunition to fight for others. To strive to prevent anyone from enduring the tragedies he and his family went through. That is his true triumph.
About Karl
Born in 1928, Karl McMillen, Jr., grew up in a young and developing Southern California. From an early age, Karl displayed a drive for greatness; working odds-and-ends jobs, soaking up knowledge and skillsets from every available source.
Karl began plumbing tract houses in Southern California as a partner in Alert Plumbing. He went on to distribute plumbing supplies all throughout Southern California and Las Vegas as the owner of Todd Pipe & Supply, which grew to nine locations and employed over four hundred dedicated employees. Through Karl’s hard work, dedication, and commitment to his employees and customers, the success of Todd Pipe became legendary.
Karl’s story of business success is counterbalanced by the emotional deaths of his wife to cancer and of both his sons, who spent most of their lives battling substance abuse. Karl, too, has struggled with alcoholism and proudly carries his seventeen-year sobriety chip.
Karl’s efforts to save his sons from drugs is a saga in itself, as he experienced firsthand the trials and errors of early rehab programs in the late 1960s and early ’70s. It was this experience, coupled with his sons’ struggles and deaths that drove Karl McMillen to the incredible philanthropy he is known for today.
After re-marrying in 2007, Karl, with his wife Carol, started The McMillen Family Foundation, which supports a long list of organizations dedicated to aiding those who suffer from substance abuse. To date, the McMillen Family Foundation has donated over $12 million towards the battle against drug and alcohol addiction.
Using his powerful wealth as ammunition to fight for others—to strive to prevent anyone from enduring the tragedies he and his family went through—is surely Karl’s greatest triumph.
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