V 13 N. 14 James Hogue, A Man of Running Talent and Skills of Deception

                                          James Hogue aka Alexi Santana aka Jay Huntsman

                                                       From The New Yorker Sept. 3, 2001, p. 73

                       

This is a story I was not looking for, had never heard of but found it nevertheless.  The find is as intriguing almost as the story itself.  My friends know that I am a devotee of second hand stores and the big one here in Courtenay, British Columbia is called Value Village or affectionately  "VV Boutique".  It offers a 30% discount to those over 55 on Tuesdays.  I think my funeral may be held there someday.  So each Tuesday one of my stops in the store is the magazine rack to look for slightly used New Yorker magazines, because I enjoy the stories, the writing, and above all the cartoons.  That fateful day last week there was only one New Yorker on the rack, and I grabbed it.  I thought initially it was an issue from 2021, but when I got home and took a closer look it was September 3, 2001.  Twenty-two years old and counting, smelling a bit musty when I opened it,  and to my further surprise the main article inside was a story about a runner.  No way.  I had one issue from the 1930's with a brief track and field story, but this was a real find. 

The second page had a caricature of a distance runner wearing a Princeton singlet striding across a campus somewhat lacking in ivy covered walls possibly on his way to a finance class.  This runner a white male, slightly long hair is looking out the corner of his eye toward some coeds sunning themselves on the grass.  He seems to be  wary of them, as if they might know something about him that he does not want known.  Indeed that was the point of James Hogue's story.  The truth was James was 30 years old when he matriculated to Princeton in 1989.  He was now on his third identity, and he had already run for two years at the University of Wyoming.  A long way from home, he had graduated from Washington High School in Wyandotte, Kansas in 1977 and went to the University of Wyoming and ran for their cross country and track teams.  His name appears in the 1978 NCAA national cross country meet, a race I witnessed in Madison, Wisconsin.  Henry Rono was there and had had an off day and finished two places behind Hogue, yes, the Henry Rono, 228th a year after winning the previous championship. But that's another story.  To reawaken your memories that was the weekend that the Jonestown massacre in Guyana was exposed to the world.  

After leaving Wyoming with  two seasons under his spikes, Hogue  bounced around the West, claiming cowboy status, and in 1985 entered Palo Alto High School in California as Jay Huntsman, an orphan who also happened to be able to run.  He won the Stanford Invitation (HS) meet (unattached) and kept a low profile after the race.  This led to Jason Cole reporting for the Peninsula Times Tribune to discover that a Jay Huntsman had indeed been born in San Diego on January 19, 1969 but had died 2 days later of pneumonia. You know the drill.  Found out,  Huntsman-Hogue disappeared a few days later.  In between school and university efforts Hogue led a life of non-violent crime,  stealing bicycles from high tech bike builders and probably selling the parts.  Eventually on March 30, 1988 he was busted in St. George, Utah living in a storage facility where he  had also cached some of his bikes  .  A little over a year later he was a freshman at Princeton.   Hard to believe but it all happened.  

Hogue was a good runner,  good enough to make Wyoming's team which had a fleet of Kenyans, including future Kenyan Olympian Joseph Nzau and went to nationals with them as their fifth man.  

Burned out from overtraining and trying to keep up with Nzau and his compatriots at Wyoming,  Hogue made his way down to Texas and spent some time at a community college in 1979 and then the University of Texas at Austin.  No mention whether he went out for track.  He studied chemical engineering but got busted again for bike theft and moved on.

Then on to Princeton by 1988.  At Princeton, Hogue (now Alexi Santana) was their top dog.  He won several 5,000 meter races on the track, but in a meet at Harvard, a young woman who had been on the cross country team at Palo Alto, recognized him and wrote back to her coach, and Hogue's life again began unravelling.

David Samuels got wind of the story and was able to track Hogue down and interview him several times to produce the story for The New Yorker ten years later. (These things take time.)  Only one slight error in Samuels' reporting.  He talks about workouts that Hogue and teammates were doing under Ron Richardson, an authoritarian coach if ever there ever was one, and he mentions doing 32 x 220 meters.  That's the only slip by Samuels, with that 'meters' expression.  Samuels would go on to publish the book "The Runner" in 2008. 

                           

In February of 1991 when Hogue was busted for his scam at Princeton, the story was published all over the nation as indeed Hogue had worked his scams in multiple places, but then the story dried up and disappeared.  It was only in that errant trip to Value Village that I first heard about it.   The only person I've mentioned this to who actually remembered it was Walt Murphy, but he has an encyclopedic memory and is publishing track stories everyday.  Us mortals.. well.         

Here's the time line on Hogue in case you are a bit confused.   

                              Born 1959 Wyandotte, Kansas as James Hogue

                              Graduated Washington HS Wyandotte 1977  age 18 as James Hogue

                               Attended U. of Wyoming Laramie 1977-78 age 18-19  as James Hogue

                               U of Texas 1979  age 20  as James Hogue

                                Palo Alto High School    1985  age 26  as Jay Huntsman

                                Princeton  1988   age 29  as Alexi Santana

David Samuels fills in the gaps between Hogue's academic episodes and his time on the loose and his stints in the slammer.  It's no less fascinating than his forays into academia.

Hogue was no slouch as a runner and he had an SAT score of 1400 along with his expropriated minority status that helped him get into the Ivy League. He was also making A's in his classes at Princeton.  Furthermore he got a lot of money to be there.  Samuels takes more than a little swipe at Princeton in his story about the 'privileged folks' who get into the Ivy League schools by virtue of the Legacy System.  George W. Bush,  par example.

Below I am listing the link to The New Yorker article.  Be warned it is eight pages long.

I've also found a number of newspaper stories published at the time (1991) when Hogue was a cause celebre for a few days.  They are further down.

I'm sure all of us have run into con men and women in life and in the track world.  We just want so much to believe them, it makes their deceptions that much easier to accept.   Feel free to tell us about the ones you've known.  I am including comments from Richard Mach on his read as a psychologist on the psyche of Hogue.     George Brose

    Link:   click here:  "The Runner" from "The New Yorker" Sept 3, 2001

This is probably from the Washington HS , Wyandotte, KS yearbook.  Thanks to Dennis Kavanaugh.

New York Daily News March 1991

                              Note that Hogue (Jay Huntsman wears the HS singlet inside out.

                                                            Kansas City Star March 2, 1991

                                                                                  

                                                       Central New Jersey Home News

The intermixing of information and leads from the media stories and Samuels work with Hogue’s canny insertions suggest that he may not have been ‘that’ smart.  Struck by the perp walk pic complete w policeman holding his arm: Hogue smiling. For the Press or because he’s been caught? And the uncertainty around whether he is going to get pinched gone.   Richard Mach

                                              The Allentown Morning Call   1991
                                                  

Hi George-

I found this article fascinating. While I don’t think I crossed paths with Hogue, elements of his story showed up in a variety of characters within the 1970’s Colorado running scene. We were an odd lot of eccentrics, but I never met anyone that matched this guy!

Thanks for forwarding!   Rick Lower

                                                  Philadelphia Inquirer  February 11, 1992

                                                                 San Francisco Examiner

                                                                     February 1991

                                                                   

From Richard Mach:

"Read through link below and wondered if Samuels’ in-depth book published — as you said — later (7 yrs) in 2008 wasn’t an effort to understand himself.  A journalistic risk taker, feelings-free presenter, who depends on a kind of stealth in making his important points.  He is focused on an essential potentiality within every human to get over on his fellows, whether as a game or for personal aggrandizement.  Or both.  Samuels has apparently done other pieces on double identities.  I wonder if his readers aren’t being treated to a little of that gaming in how he lays out his narrative. And, then, again, perhaps it is little more than my envy speaking over how very seemingly effortlessly facile his prose is.  I mean how exactly can we be absolutely sure of absolutely anything? Anyone?   In any case.   And because, so often, that can carry considerable personal existential weight, IT certainly continues to carry that weight in 2023.   For us all. " 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Samuels_(writer)

  Nothing more fascinating than a psychopath.    A hole in the brain where compassion and empathy resides.  Instead a kind of reptilian single mindedness intent on using others.    

Rich

and then there is  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1339161/    Ned Price