Robert Guerrero’s shadowboxing punches sliced through the air. He darted around the ring with a bounce in his footwork. “I probably look a lot better now, don’t I?” he said, a wide smile creasing his face. “I feel alive again.” Two weeks earlier, Guerrero had stood outside the Stanford Hospital, explaining his decision to pull out of the biggest fight of his career to support his wife, Casey, who had undergone a bone-marrow transplant. She will get better, he said in a tired voice. He was right. Casey is out of the hospital. And although her health remains fragile, the signs are encouraging in her long-running battle with leukemia. That’s why the Gilroy boxer known as “The Ghost” was back to dancing around the East Palo Alto Boxing Club ring as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “It’s funny, but people kept coming up to me and saying, ‘You gave up your title? How could you do that?’ ” Guerrero said. “I just told them that it means nothing to me. What I’m doing is more important. But just watch, because I’ll be back.” His gloves were a blur as he threw another combination. Guerrero arrived at the gym with Casey’s grandfather, Jerry Kissee. They had just dropped Casey and her grandmother, Joan Kissee, off at Stanford for her regular monitoring. As he taped his hands, Guerrero said Casey had begun regaining her weight, and all the tests so far had been encouraging.
By Mark Emmons ~ Mercury News
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