Sharpe talk: Ex-Cardinal, daughter making up for time lost during his decades-long addiction

Rebekah Sharpe was living in Pittsburgh when she got a phone call from her aunt. Her father, former Cardinals offensive lineman Luis Sharpe, had suffered a massive heart attack in Toledo, Ohio. The prognosis was not promising.

“His LAD artery was 98 percent blocked. In the medical community, that kind of heart attack is called the widowmaker,” Rebekah Sharpe said. “I just grabbed a couple of clothes and jumped on the freeway to go be with him. “

Luis Sharpe underwent surgery and was in a coma for a couple of days. But he woke up. When he did, Rebekah was at his side.

“I just remember looking at him and saying, ‘You are obviously here for a reason,'” she said. “We started quantifying the number of near-death encounters he had had. So many people lose their lives for much less, but God saved him so many times so I told him, ‘I want to be a part of why he saved you.'”

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For the past four years, that has meant working side by side to deliver a sobering but hopeful message to thousands of people impacted by addiction and substance abuse.

The Sharpes are ambassadors for Hall of Fame Health, which is affiliated with the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Through speaking engagements or their podcast, Sharpe Talk, they share their own experiences. The hope is that their candor will help others see and find a light at the end of a dark and seemingly unnavigable tunnel.

“We’re not bad people; drug addicts and alcoholics,” Luis Sharpe said. “We are critically ill; not hopelessly bad. We need rehabilitation. We need counseling. We need therapy. We need education. We need fellowship. There are myriad things that we need in order to become productive, responsible and law-abiding members of society. 

“That’s where people like me and Rebekah and others that have recovered come in. It’s up to us to share this message of hope and promise of freedom. That message is that an addict — any addict or alcoholic — can stop using drugs or alcohol, lose the desire to use those substances and find a new way to live.”

The Sharpes booked their first speaking engagement while Luis lay in that hospital bed with Rebekah at his side. It came on Father’s Day in 2018 — on his birthday weekend, no less — at the Lighthouse Church near Cape May, New Jersey.

When they finished, there was a line around the corner of the church of people waiting to shake their hands, thank them for their message, and share their own stories.

“I actually got more out of them sharing their stories than I’m sure they received from us sharing our story,” Luis said. “It was a very impactful and powerful moment for both of us and honestly, that’s what makes us so passionate still today, particularly with the astounding numbers of opioid and fentanyl deaths across the country. We feel like there’s no better time for us to go share our story and our message of hope and the promise of freedom.”

In the past four years, the father-daughter duo has criss-crossed the nation, attending the Super Bowl or sponsored events. They have spoken with or hosted a multitude of famous guests on their podcast who have shared their own stories of personal challenges. They have raised money through auctions to help families struggling with addiction. They have met and inspired hundreds of people with similar stories to theirs.

“I was a four-time loser,” Luis, 64, said. “I went to prison four times, I was shot twice, I was called a football-hero-to-crackhead-zero. And now here I am, traveling with my daughter to all these different cities and watching her audience engagement, how she educates the audience and her great stage presence. She’s able to read the room and she has this masterful storytelling ability at these Hall of Fame events. 

“I see the impact she’s having on these players that I looked up to. Imagine what that feels like as a father.”

It’s a joy that neither imagined possible 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. It’s a joy that neither experienced much when the family was living in Ahwatukee.

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Sharpe is often regarded as the best left tackle in Cardinals franchise history, although he has a new challenger in Paris Johnson Jr.. Drafted in the first round out of UCLA, Sharpe played 13 NFL seasons from 1982 to 1994.

Sharpe’s addiction began while he was playing, but he called himself a functional addict in those years. The offseasons were different, and retirement brought even greater challenges. Eventually, Sharpe moved out of the family home and into a Tempe hotel so he could feed his addiction without interruption.

In 1995, former teammates Roy Green and Larry Lee were so concerned with Sharpe’s path that they wrapped him in duct tape and drove him to the Betty Ford Clinic in Palm Springs, California. He stayed a couple of days, then paid $550 for a taxi to take him back to Phoenix.

“I was addicted to crack cocaine and just living a disobedient life,” he said. “I was shot twice and both times, it was a miracle that I survived. I was beaten down in a prison riot, had my right orbital socket broken and needed surgery. I was concussed for over a week. I had a major heart attack. Nine out of 10 people that have that heart attack don’t survive.”

Throughout Sharpe’s addiction and various imprisonments, his family was living another version of hell, one that included the loss of his daughter, Leah, who was shot to death in 2007.

“I do have memories of good times, whether it was seeing my father on television or walking through the tunnel with him after a game and there being fans and reporters vying for his attention,” Rebekah said. “But the majority of what I remember is the downfall, seeing a lot of chaos and calamity in our home, living in a state of hypervigilance and really just being in survival mode.”

The impact was not confined to the Sharpe household.

“I remember being excluded,” Rebekah said. “I remember children saying some really hurtful and harmful things that I know they were hearing at home from their parents. As his drug abuse continued to skyrocket and he was getting shot in the streets and they were filming him being arrested and painting him as a villain, that definitely trickled down to how we were viewed in the community.

“Suddenly, friends were not able to come over to our home anymore. I was not able to go over to everyone’s house. People just grew really cold so it became extremely lonely. Not to pull the race card, but we were one of the few black families in Equestrian Estates in Ahwatukee so we were already different. As his downfall became more apparent, I feel like those differences and that separation became palpable.”

While Sharpe was in prison, he began studying the Bible and internalizing its messages, but it was a slow process to what he hoped would be his salvation.

“I can’t count the number of times that I promised that I would never go back to drugs and my life would be different,” he said. “I remember when Rebekah would come and visit me behind the prison walls. I remember there being a lot of tears and there being a lot of anguish. I ended up suffering the consequences for my inability to follow through on so many promises.”

While Luis was studying scripture, Rebekah took up writing and that became her main form of communication with her father.

“I still do a lot of writing; I have my own blog,” she said. “But I realized later that my gift of writing was refined through all of the letters that my father and I would write to each other. I think I was probably one of the only children out of the five that became his pen pal when he was incarcerated.”

Some of the content of those letters was reserved for basic check-ins on school and life, but the majority of them focused on a shared passion, their love of God.

“While he was in prison, that’s where he really met God and became a student of the Bible,” Rebekah said. “That’s where he received salvation and started seeing himself through the characters in the Bible, and so he would really be debriefing in those letters and talking about the things that God was doing in his life.

“He talked about what he was learning, and obviously apologizing for what he had done, and talking about his future vision and his future goals and the things that he wanted to do and how he could come back out and make a positive impact on the community.”

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Luis can’t help but beam with pride when he watches his daughter command, inform and engage with an audience. He feels gratitude that he is there to witness that forum, and to participate in it with his daughter.

“We talk frequently, we get the chance to travel together and I feel like we’ve reconciled our relationship and things are moving forward,” he said. “We’ve even got our book coming up soon.”

“I’m just grateful that God saved my life — that he saw fit to keep me alive yet again — and the fact that Rebekah was right by my side the entire time, that was significant.”

Rebekah said there is always room for growth, but she agreed that her relationship with her father is in a good place. That feeling is reflected in her messages.

“I speak to invoke healing, to inspire hope and to invite others into the intimate goodness that comes when you know and love God, but I will also say that forgiveness is really at the core of our message, and what forgiveness can really unlock, not for the other person, but for you,” she said. “I always try to illustrate how making the decision to forgive my father and to forgive my mother was almost for the sake of a generation. It really propelled me into a new facet of my destiny.

“I feel like God really healed both of our hearts in that ICU unit six years ago and gave us this opportunity. Whether we’re on a Hall of Fame stage or we’re speaking to men at a recovery center, when we’re sharing our stories through the father-daughter lens, people are just so touched. I think they really do begin to see, ‘Wow, if God did it for them, and if they were able to overcome all of this loss, all of this tragedy and all these tribulations, I can, too.”

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