Jon Robinson has spent years in the spotlight, but now feels compelled to bring his drug-riddled life out of the shadows.
Robinson, 49, was a high-school basketball standout who played in college. He was a Charlotte radio personality and a television news anchor in North Carolina and South Carolina. He was even the stadium announcer for the Carolina Panthers from opening day.
He wants to admit now that his public persona masked a dark side.
"Only reason I'm doing this is so people will know. I don't want to be a fraud, anymore. I want people to know what I am," Robinson said.
Robinson is a cocaine and heroin addict who is jobless. His Gastonia home is in foreclosure. He took out the last $1,400 of his savings this month, $300 of it earmarked to pay off a drug debt. He expects to move into a homeless shelter.
He cultivated a basketball career through a youth coach who became a father figure after his parents split up when he was 6. That coach also molested Robinson between the ages of 10 and 15.
In 1980, Albert Charles Burgess Jr. pleaded guilty in Gaston County to taking indecent liberties with six boys in Gastonia and served four years of a 20-year sentence. In 1985, he pleaded guilty to child molestation charges in Anderson, S.C.
Four weeks ago, Burgess was convicted in Asheville on federal child pornography charges. He is awaiting sentencing.
Robinson, who was a member of the 1977 state champion basketball team at Hunter Huss High School, received a scholarship to play at the University of Maryland, but his substance abuse had already begun.
Robinson was 12 when he started drinking beer and smoking marijuana. By 18, he was free-basing cocaine. He was a sophomore at Maryland when he tried heroin.
Robinson played for four years as a reserve guard. He graduated in 1983 and began his climb in Charlotte-area radio, secretly maintaining his addiction.
In 1992, he joined WBT-AM and stayed clean for about six months. But he started using again and missed work. After his wife gave birth to his first son in 1994, Robinson says he stopped for a while. He went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, but soon began using again.
"You think you can use and be OK. You think, ‘I'm OK. I can handle it.... Once I started, I couldn't stop. That was 1998. I've been using ever since, hot and heavy."
His first marriage ended, and in 1997, he moved to WBTV, often sitting in as an anchor. He said he stopped using heroin, but continued with cocaine. When he was passed over for a promotion, he went to WCBD in Charleston, S.C., and soon joined in the local drug culture.
Robinson says that one night he smoked crack between the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts.
One night in 2006, after drinking and snorting cocaine, he got into a 2 a.m. street fight. Management got word and Robinson was out of work within two months.
He returned to Charlotte and landed a job on the struggling WDYT-AM.
In April 2008, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in his throat. At first, he was given a 20 percent chance of survival, but subsequent exams showed it had not spread. An aggressive regimen helped him beat the illness, but he was laid off work in a round of budget cuts.
A year ago, Robinson became morning host on WQKC-FM. Its morning show audience surged 40 percent in Robinson's first three months. But he would miss shifts, and his second wife took their son to Ohio to live with a relative.
Robinson says he doesn't expect to get better until he hits bottom. And he's not sure where that is.
"I've called bottom a gazillion times. There's always a trap door to fall through," he said.
"I'm not going to promise I'm going to get clean. That's not the happy ending here. I don't think there is a happy ending to this deal."
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