My Remarkable Journey (33 page)

What did I do? The Cardiac Foundation came about because of a single question—and I wasn’t even the one who asked it.

The question came up at a table at Duke Zeibert’s about six months after my bypass surgery. This was 1988. Someone asked how
my heart was doing, and when I told him it was OK, he asked, “Hey, what did the surgery cost you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Insurance paid.”

It got me to thinking. How much
did
the surgery cost—and what about people who don’t have insurance? The thing about a bypass is that it’s an elective surgery.
You may have severe blockage, but your insurance company isn’t necessarily going to pay for you to get it fixed. You’re not
forced to go onto the operating table. You can eat healthier, exercise. The only way you can get the surgery paid for is to
have a heart attack. When you show up at the emergency room in an ambulance, that’s when you’re covered.

The first time I went on the radio to talk about this, I said the absolute tragedy is that there should be something like
a Larry King Cardiac Foundation. There’d be no need for this in Israel or Sweden or England. We’re the only industrialized
nation in the world that doesn’t have national health insurance. Christ would be for it, there’s no doubt in my mind. I absolutely
believe health is a right, like speech.

So I got a few people together and we held a little fund-raiser at a high school in Baltimore. Johnny Unitas, the great quarterback,
came. So did Tommy Lasorda. A department store put on a fashion show. I got up and spoke. We had some laughs. Tommy made an
impassioned speech. We raised about a hundred thousand dollars.

The first thing we did was set up a transplant for a coach at a Catholic school. His problem was that he was not a full-time
teacher. He only went to the school to coach. So he was paid, but not insured. The beauty of the story is that he recovered
and had a child. He named the kid Larry.

We brought the coach to our second fund-raiser—which we held in Washington. It’s hard for someone who’s had his life saved
to not want to get up and thank you from the bottom of his heart. It’s the most natural thing in the world. But what did I
do to help him? All I did was not know how much my heart surgery cost, then stand up in a high school gym and do a little
shtick. So you can see why I feel undeserving.

Really, let’s look at this. What did I do? I had a heart attack in an emergency room and was saved by Dr. Richard Katz. I
needed bypass surgery and was operated on by Dr. Wayne Isom. I started a foundation. Katz came on the board and hooked us
up with the George Washington University hospitals. Isom and New York Presbyterian joined in. So we got great doctors and
great hospitals, and all I did to get them was smoke three packs of cigarettes a day for almost forty years, eat fatty lamb
chops, and then walk into an emergency room with chest pain.

Early on, most of the foundation’s money came in through our annual gala. We got Marvin Hamlisch to play the piano, Vic Damone
to sing, and Don Rickles to do one of his bits. Then I really felt undeserving. I certainly didn’t deserve the abuse Rickles
heaped on me.

He introduced me once, “Don’t stand up all the way, you’re not that big.”

Rickles has been busting my chops for fifty years now. I can remember taking my mother to see him in Miami. Sidney Poitier
was seated at our table. My mother was whispering, “What a nice-looking man!” Rickles came on and said, “Jeez, Larry, you’ll
hang around with anybody.”

Then, “Sidney, nice to have you here. Hate to break it to you, we’re out of fried chicken.”

Then, like always, he turned to the band and said in mock terror, “Is he coming up to the stage?”

We had the guy who runs Morton’s Steakhouse at one gala. He weighs about three hundred pounds. Rickles said, “I’d have you
stand up and be introduced, but our crane operator is off tonight.”

At another gala, we had Sinbad. He did a number on Jonathan Tisch of Loews hotels. Sinbad said to him, “You’ve got a nice
hotel. Rooms for five hundred dollars a night. Good sheets. Nice pillows. But five dollars for a Snickers bar? Come on! Give
it away!”

Dick Cheney hosted one of our galas. I remember when he found out he needed heart surgery. He sat down with me in a stairwell
in the New Orleans Superdome at the 1988 Republican Convention. “Tell me what’s going to happen,” he said, “and don’t leave
out a thing.”

George C. Scott called me before he went in for bypass surgery. Scott played General Patton. In that movie, holy shit, was
he tough. Let me tell you, the heart surgery scared him to death. Anthony Quinn called, wanting to know what to expect. Pretty
soon, I became synonymous with heart surgery. Talk about
What am I doing here?
moments. What was little Larry Zeiger doing at a heart foundation gala singing “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder? My son
Chance danced with James Brown. The list of people who’ve volunteered to perform over the years is phenomenal. Celine Dion.
Gladys Knight. Rod Stewart. Ricky Martin. Seal. Tim McGraw. Lewis Black. Marc Anthony. Tony Bennett. Shania Twain. Dana Carvey.
Colby Caillet. Michael Bolton.

At one gala, the magician Joe Ramano made an ornament, blew into it, and snow started to fall from the ceiling all over the
ballroom. It wasn’t rigged. There was nothing in the ceiling. He created snow out of nowhere over the whole ballroom. Nobody
had ever seen anything like it.

As the foundation grew, I was able to make six or eight phone calls a year to tell people who didn’t have insurance and couldn’t
afford the surgery that the foundation would cover them. There’s no better feeling in the world—hearing the thrill in a voice
that has just gotten good news.

I figured if we could get it up to twenty surgeries a year, what could be better? Then Larry Jr. came into my life. He had
been running businesses for Intuit. We put him on our board.

I was kind of like a fireman at Intuit. I’d go into different operations, straighten them out, and move them forward. Then
I’d move to another unit. I was constantly on the move. My wife and I had moved seven times in eleven years. We were in Tampa
when I came to a career crossroads. In order to stay with Intuit, I was either going to have to go back to California or consider
another move.

We’d just had twins. Now Shannon and I had three kids. My wife liked living in Florida. Shannon and I had never had a home.
We had houses, but not a home. We lived with boxes in rooms; some never got unpacked. They were just shuttled from one house
to the next. As much as I liked working for Intuit, I wanted a home. I wanted to stay in Florida.

So I talked with my dad about it. He said, “Look, the president of the foundation is moving on. Do you want to help out as
president for six months while you figure out what you want to do?”

I’d had great opportunities being around icons in Silicon Valley and observing how to build businesses. My dad was the classic
example of a founder who has a great idea and starts a business, but is not necessarily the person to make it really grow.
I felt like I could provide the information the foundation needed to see where it could go.

I would be taking a huge pay cut to do it. But it was only six months. The lower salary wasn’t the obstacle. The number one
obstacle for me was that I would have to sacrifice my identity. Now I wouldn’t be able to hold off until someone asked me
directly, “Are you Larry King’s son?” It would be out there.

I’ve always wanted to be in my own skin. Now I would have to hold out a Larry King Cardiac Foundation business card and say,
“I’m Larry King Jr.” It was something I knew I wasn’t going to be comfortable with at first. But I was going to help save
lives, so I did it.

At the start, it was a struggle to be Larry King Jr. I’d meet with CEOs, and I could sense that some thought I’d gotten the
job as a handout from my dad. Then the conversation would get going and I’d start talking about strategic planning and business-driven
metrics. All of a sudden, I could see their eyes open.

One day Larry came to me and said, “We’ve got to run a gap analysis.”

I said, “A
what
?”

He tells me a gap analysis is when you see where your business is today, then you compare it to where you want to be tomorrow.
Then you can see the gap between those two points.

He said, “Dad, you can give heart surgery to someone who needs it every day.”

A surgery every single day? At first, I thought Larry Jr. was nuts. You’d have to raise huge sums of money to save a life
a day.

About six months in, when I started to see the possibilities of what the foundation could do, it really became exciting.

In order to save a life a day, we needed to come up with fifteen million dollars a year in donations. But the experience I
received working in Fortune 500 companies came in handy. We were able to reduce the cost of each patient served by 60 percent.
We were able to do that by getting doctors to donate their time, companies to donate free products, and hospitals to work
with us on containing costs.

Then something really opened my eyes. There was this eleven-year-old boy whose father had died of cardiac arrest at the age
of forty-three. Matt, the boy’s name was. A few days after his father died, Matt made up wristbands that said
BE SMART SAVE A HEART
. They look just like those yellow bands that Lance Armstrong uses to fight cancer. Matt sold more than two thousand dollars
worth of them at school. He sent us the money and wrote us a letter saying something like, “Mr. King, please use this to save
the life of a father so that this doesn’t happen to another son like me.”

We brought Matt to a gala. He gave a speech. And then he was introduced onstage to a father whose life he’d saved. It was
an unbelievable moment.

F
RIEND

I was really nervous when I got onstage. When I hugged Everett, who’d been saved by the operation, it was one of the most
moving moments of my life. I can’t describe it. The best that I can do is say that it felt like my life had a purpose. And
I felt like my dad was there watching.

I still to this day do not believe my dad died. He was jumping on a trampoline with us only hours before. We thought he was
healthy as a horse. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to a bunch of noise, and came out of my room to see the medics.

My mom told me about the Larry King Cardiac Foundation. I didn’t know much about how things worked with celebrities. I raised
the money and sent a letter and thought that somebody would read it. The next thing I knew, I got a phone call from Larry
King.

We talked about what happened. He told me how his dad had died of a heart attack when he was a kid. Then I got to meet him
at the gala.

What I’d done didn’t hit me until I was on that stage. When I came off, all these people started coming up to me and telling
me that what I’d done was amazing. I just wanted to do more.

It was unbelievable for anyone sitting in that room. I can’t begin to describe what it was like for me. There was my father.
He’d lost his father to a heart attack at age nine. And because of the foundation he’d started, an eleven-year-old kid was
able to give life to another kid’s father. And there I was. I’d never been around my father when I grew up. Now I was getting
a chance to work to make a moment like that and then watch my father have it.

I’d love to know what my father was thinking when he saw that father hug that kid.

It was surreal. Watching it was almost like an out-of-body experience. Look what this kid has done!

I wasn’t thinking about my father’s death. I don’t dwell on my father’s death. I no longer believe that my father abandoned
me. I know it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want to leave. Instead, I just move forward and have this crazy life that puts me
in the position to be in these situations. The only way I can explain it to you is that my life is hard for me to believe.

After a moment like that, how could I leave for another job to sell software or a credit card? Matt raised thirty thousand
dollars more, and saved ten other fathers.

In my first year as president, the foundation funded twenty-two surgeries.

The second year, we did about a hundred.

The next year, we did about a hundred and fifty.

In 2008, we did three hundred.

We’re going to get to one a day. We’re going to get to one a day because the more people hear these stories, the more people
want to help. One hundred and ten people in Los Angeles are alive today because of Larry King. Not only that, he’s touching
people all over the world. The stories are amazing.

One of the most memorable stories to me was this boy in Afghanistan. The Pentagon flew him in, and we did the surgery at Washington
Children’s Hospital. I went and visited the boy and his father. They didn’t speak English. But I didn’t have to understand
what they were saying because I could see it on their faces.

There was a young woman who couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. Her sister wrote us an amazing letter asking for help. We
got her the surgery. Afterward she got a job, remarried, and gave birth to her first child on Christmas day. She’s now chipping
in to help others. A guy named Chris, who runs a little photography business, didn’t have insurance and was in need of heart
valve surgery. Now he comes to our gala every year and photographs the event for free. I can go on all day.

My goal for my dad is not something he wants for himself. It’s something I want to do for him. My dad already has a legacy
in journalism. But this is something else. Thirty or forty years from now, you’re not going to see Larry King on CNN. Maybe
there will be some odd video clip every now and then. But every day, he will be responsible for saving somebody’s life. My
father’s name will be mentioned well into his grandchildren’s lifetime. It’s like Anthony Robbins said at our recent gala,
“The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”