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August 25, 2003 Like magic Mix of miracles, tricks keeps EHT teen going EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP - Chad Juros is much better with magic than he is with miracles. The boy who calls himself The Magical Chadakazam can make his cane dance. He can pull one gift after another out of an empty bag. He can turn a spectator's backside into a slot machine, loudly spitting out silver dollars that his fresh-out-of-the-audience assistant somehow never knew were there. He even can pick your card out of an invisible deck, then show it to you, just to prove he got it right. This Egg Harbor Township High School sophomore also can tell you exactly how he does all that. Or he could, in detail, but he won't, because he doesn't want to take the magic out of his magic - for himself, and especially for spectators. But ask him about miracles and this bright, normally talkative teenager suddenly sounds more like a mime than a magician. He tries to talk, tries to think his thoughts through and explain them, but it doesn't work. A few words come out, but he barely turns them into sentences, let alone answers. So Chad can't say whether it's a miracle that he's alive today:
No, he can't say it took a miracle to get him past all that and more to age 15, but he also can't say what else did it. And he has no idea why he made it through his latest medical crisis - a brain hemorrhage that forced him into emergency surgery a few months ago - with his magic abilities intact, even after his surgeon warned in advance that the operation probably would destroy the fine-motor skills he needs for his craft. The bleeding brain was an after-effect of the years of treatment he got for his leukemia, including experimentally high doses of chemotherapy and radiation. And that warning from his doctor petrified him, because magic always has been Chad's refuge from the present, his hope for the future and a link to a key piece of his past. He has worked on his act and his skills almost every day since he was 6 years old, when his father taught him his first card trick to help the boy get through one of those endless hospital stays. And now, nine years later, Chad doesn't just struggle to squeeze in a few tricks before he heads to bed for the night. "If I'm up 18 hours a day," he says, "I'm probably doing magic for 16 hours. I always have a deck of cards in my hands." So when the doctor warned him what the surgery could do, Chad told him to forget it. He could live with his massive headaches, but he couldn't live without his magic. Then the doctor warned him that the price of not having surgery was likely paralysis or a stroke. They also would be fatal to his career, so Chad gave in. But before the operation, his mother heard The Magical Chadakazam give the surgeon one request. Or was it an order? "Chad told him, 'Don't take the magic away from me,'" Penny Juros remembers. * * * The doctor didn't, somehow, despite his own fears. As soon as Chad came out of surgery, he asked for a deck of cards. He started doing his tricks, and he hasn't stopped. Since then, his magic has only gotten stronger. He's had lots of paying jobs - sometimes more than one a day. He also does plenty of free performances for good causes, everywhere from his old home away from home, Children's Hospital, to the Gilda's Club in Atlantic City, where he put on three shows Friday for children from the cancer-support organization's neighborhood. The Magical Chadakazam got a taste of magic's big-time life in July, when he went to Las Vegas for a magicians' convention, did his shows for several big crowds and had long meetings and lessons with stars of the field like Jeff McBride and Lance Burton. That wasn't his first time working with the rich and famous - after a chance meeting at a NASCAR race, Chad got an invitation to perform at a camp that legendary driver Richard Petty's family runs for children with life-threatening diseases. Next month, Chad is scheduled to go to Washington, D.C. - another famous American entertainment venue. But unlike the sleight-of-hand tricks we sometimes see from Capitol Hill, Chad is doing his legitimate magic at an event sponsored by the National Children's Cancer Foundation. A program organizer hopes to get Chad to entertain several times in the three-day meeting, but at some point he might have to share the stage - the NCCF invited first lady Laura Bush to deliver the keynote speech. This roll of success he is riding now is no doubt partly the result of all Chad's years of hard work and practice. But both he and his biggest fan know there's also a bit of perverse luck hard at work here. "I think Chad is smart enough to realize that cancer has opened a lot of doors for us," his mother says on a sunny August afternoon in their Egg Harbor Township home. "If I never got sick," Chad himself adds, "I don't think I'd be as far as I am now." For one thing, his illness was what gave him all that time to work on his tricks for all those years after his father started teaching him. But since then, Chad's cancer and his story have opened hearts to him, and in one way or another brought him to the attention of his magic idols, from McBride to Burton to Penn & Teller and more big-name magicians. He heard from all of them before or after his latest surgery, on his visit to Las Vegas, or through other connections. Chad also has learned a lot from these magic stars. But his first magic teacher taught Chad his last lesson more than three years ago, not long after Chad finally got home from his 17 months in the cancer ward. Don Juros, a dentist and local tennis champion, collapsed later that year. His family and doctors assumed it was from the stress the Juroses were under - Penny had spent all those months right in the room beside Chad, while Don stayed at home most of the time to take care of Chad's older sister, Faith, and run his practice. But his weakness got worse, which led to medical tests and then a cruel diagnosis: Don Juros had a form of brain cancer so aggressive, his doctors estimated he had a year to live. And Chad, then 10 and 11 years old, learned a painful truth watching his father, his mentor, deteriorate to the point where Penny says her husband became "a 3-month-old baby trapped in a 41-year-old body." The lesson was that miracles and magic have at least one thing in common: You can't always count on either one of them. Don Juros died Jan. 17, 2000. * * * The Magical Chadakazam can see the future. In it, he keeps working on his craft, keeps getting more and more magic into his magic. He tours the country, wowing bigger audiences with his act - and, his mom hopes, inspiring them with his story. He starts by getting more jobs around here, like the bookings he has gotten at Borders Books Music & Cafe in Mays Landing and at Boscov's at the Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township. Plus, he keeps doing the magic lessons he has been giving to six students - magicians even younger than he is. He also goes to college, partly to learn to teach better. And when The Magical Chadakazam is good enough, and famous enough, he opens his own magic theater - maybe in Las Vegas, like his idol, Burton; or ideally, in Atlantic City, which has the casinos and the crowds without as much competition as Las Vegas. And by the way, Atlantic City also is only about 20 minutes from home. One of Chad's magic mentors, Joe Festa, of Absecon, has no doubt that the teen can make it to the big-time. "He's very dedicated," says Festa, a 20-year-veteran of the magic business who works under the stage name Joe Holiday. "The want to be better, to be more skilled, is there. He's definitely got the drive to go places and do things." Festa, an Atlantic City native, spent years working on the Boardwalk and then in the city's casinos, but 90 percent of his jobs are out of town now, at corporate events, conventions and competitions. Festa loves his job and his career, but he thinks his young friend is headed for bigger things. Along with Chad's work ethic, Festa is impressed by the boy's understanding that the best magicians aren't necessarily the ones who know the most tricks. "It's the presentation, the ability to entertain people using magic," Festa says. "It's not just trick, trick, trick." One of the thrills of Festa's career was walking onto the stage in his hometown and getting laughter and applause for the "art of amazing people." He expects The Magical Chadakazam to know that magical feeling some day. "If Chad continues with the practice ... with the drive he has, he will make it," Festa says. "I could definitely see Chad fulfilling his dreams of becoming the Lance Burton of Atlantic City." But to get to that bright future, Chad has to stay healthy now. And to see how he's doing, he's going through a round of tests this week running literally from his head to his toes - from an MRI on his brain to surgery to cut "suspicious-looking" freckles off two toes. Penny says doctors are concerned they could be skin cancer, another hangover from all that radiation. Those tests will keep coming - Chad knows his doctors will watch him forever. He hopes his audiences will do the same. And he understands that with his history, everyone who cares about him will always have the same question: Will Chad Juros need any more miracles, or some day, will magic finally be enough for him? To contact Chad Juros, go to his Web site: www.magicalchad.com To e-mail Martin DeAngelis at The Press: MDeangelis@pressofac.com
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e-mail: chad@magicalchad.com |