Tell It To Al

Who is a more admirable athlete? Lance Armstrong who won several Tour de France bicycle races by doping? Or Mirsada Buric who went to the 1992 Olympics shortly after surviving captivity in a concentration camp?

Ms. Buric, representing Bosnia, did not win. But as it turns out, neither did Mr. Armstrong now that he’s been stripped of his victories.

Plenty of pampered athletes make it big, but how many concentration camp survivors even get to compete at a top level?

Ms. Buric is now a financial services advisor at BBVA Compass bank in Prescott, Ariz. She told me about her improbable  life in an in a long telephone interview.

After being released from a concentration camp in Bosnia, she was selected to represent her country in the 1992 Olympics. She barely had food to eat, or shoes to wear, let alone expensive drugs, yet she was selected for doping tests.

“Here I am from this war zone. I didn’t even have normal nutrition, normal food to eat, and I’m selected for a doping control? I mean, how ironic is that?”

Doping, she learned, was a big part of the game.

“It’s not a matter of whether you are using, it’s a matter of not getting caught,” she said. “It boils down to your conscience. If you can live with yourself as a cheater then you go with it. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself that way.

“It taints the whole sport for athletes who are not cheaters.”

Nike had to let Mr. Armstrong go. It would have fared better with this lessor-known hero.

Click here to read my column on Ms. Buric.

Before software guru John McAfee was finding trouble in Belize, he was trying to find peace in Woodland Park, Colo.

Mr. McAfee had set up a yogo retreat in the “City Above the Clouds.”

He even penned a couple books on the topic. One of them was called “Into the Heart of Truth.”

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

You know the job market is still bad when you go to a job fair for veterans, and you run into a guy who helps veterans get jobs, and he’s laid-off, too.

I met Ray Parrish at a veteran’s job fair at Chicago’s Roosevelt High School. He specializes in helping vets with less than honorable discharges.

Without an honorable discharge, it’s really difficult to find a job, and often these bad military records are simply a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder.

“He does a great job,” said  Chester Henry, a 66-year-old Vietnam vet who’s been battling this issue for most of his life.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

PHOTO: Chester Henry, left, and Ray Parrish.

Michael Milken is a complicated man: A lauded visionary and philanthropist, and a symbol of 1980s greed all in one.

History – as muddled as it is in legal maneuverings -  records that Mr. Milken was embroiled in an insider trading scandal. He never plead guilty to insider trading, though, only technical trading violations, which resulted in him serving nearly two years in a federal prison.

Milken’s philanthropy goes back long before this scandal. And, though his Milken Institute, he’s continued to find new ways to improve the health of the planet. Still, two presidents have declined to pardon him for his past convictions.

I heard Mr. Milken speak at and event put on by the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado. Rabbis I spoke with offered varying opinions about having Mr. Milken keynote a somewhat religious event.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

I know plenty of journalists who’ve had to redefine themselves amid the collapsing newspaper industry.

Chris Walsh is the only one who did so by turning to marijana.

No, he doesn’t smoke it. He covers it like a beat as editor of the Medical Marijuana Business Daily.

Weed was already becoming an industry with states legalizing medical marijuana. This week voters in Washington state and Colorado voted to legalize it’s recreational use, giving Mr. Walsh plenty to write about. 

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

Protestor Joshusa Ehrenberg isn’t just against Wall Street. He’s against money.

The world, he says, is way too obessed with it. And he’s tried to live for the last year using as little as possible.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

Joe Kissack,  a top sales executive at Columbia TriStar Television, scrambled to buy the rights to an epic survival tale.

Three Mexican fisherman were lost at sea for 284 days until they were picked up 5,000 miles away from their tiny West Coast village by a Taiwanese fishing vessel.

They came home to a hero’s welcome, but it wasn’t long before rumors began to swirl.

Some questioned whether the men concocted the tale to cover up alleged drug trafficking operations. Others wondered whether the men survived by resorting to cannibalism. Some charted the ocean currents and argued the men could not have drifted to the point where they were found.

Kissack, who has interviewed the men extensively, believes the story as it has been recounted. In his new book, The Fourth Fisherman, he recounts the tale as a metaphor for his own life. For years, Kissack suffered from addiction, anxiety and depression, even as he succeeded at a difficult career. Like the fishermen, he too, was lost.

Some stories can never be completely verified. Sometimes it doesn’t matter.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

The most interesting man in the world in the Dos Equis commercials is not as  interesting as Silicon  Valley visionary Vivek Ranadive.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

Congratulations to University of Denver law professor Jay Brown who has just been named to the Security and Exchange Commission’s new Investor Advisory Commission.

Brown will be one of two law professors on the 21-member body created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The panel, selected by the five SEC commissioners,  includes leaders in institutional and personal investments, insurance, consumer protection and corporate governance.

It will advise the SEC on how to  protect investor  interests. This is  something the SEC has not done well, hence the formation of this committee. But at least Brown’s selection is a step in the right direction.

I first got to know Brown during the 2007 insider trading trial of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio, which Brown covered in great detail for his blog. The guy lives up to all the hype of being a Fulbright Scholar.

He’s the kind of guy who is one minute serving law lessons to upper-middle class students and the next serving lunch to homeless folks at the local shelter.

He keeps his ear to the ground. And if SEC commissioners are wise, they’ll keep their ears on him.

Catholics hacked off at Larry Doyle should leave Larry Doyle alone.

I’m talking about the Larry Doyle I recently profiled in my column (click here to  read it on Marketwatch). I am not talking about the Larry Doyle who satirized  Rick Santorum and the entire Catholic faith on the Huffington Post with a piece titled “Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick  Santorum” (click here to see that).

That Larry Doyle is a Hollywood script writer.

The Doyle I wrote about is a devout Catholic who is trying to do the right thing with his life by blogging about the sins of Wall Street, where he worked for many years. Click here to see his blog.

He says a  few people have Googled him up and sent him nastygrams – just for being Larry Doyle.

I’m here to tell you, you’ve got the wrong guy.