A poker player considers the odds: Why did he survive the shooting?
Four years after a robber opened fire, questions linger for Missouri City man
STAFFORD — Chuck Olson was in a smoky strip-center bar called B.B. Wolf ’s on a Thursday night playing Texas Hold ’em, the same game he hosted four years ago in an office space a mile away, when a robber shot him clear through the neck, and another man was shot and killed, and a night that would have been like any other became the worst night of Olson’s life.
Olson, 61, didn’t play poker for a while after that. For a few months, he and his wife left the state, went to a place where they could feel safe. The bullet’s gaping exit wound behind his right ear healed.
But now, on this Thursday, three stacks of round chips — two gray, one red — sat on the octagonal, green tabletop in front of him. Out of an original group of 15, Olson, his son and a woman were still playing. It was a
game his grandmother taught him, that he taught his kids, and Olson seemed to be winning.
Poker of course is a game of risk, and it wasn’t lost on Olson that in the game of life that fateful night, he drew a lucky hand. It was hard to consider that fact too closely — to think about what it meant to be the one left alive, while another husband and father, a 45-year-old named Donald Leonetti, was dead. How could it be that God saved Olson for a purpose? Was there any purpose in Leonetti’s death? They were acquaintances, who shared a gregarious nature. Olson asked his wife, “Why couldn’t it have been me?”
‘But for an inch’
Around the table Thursday night were familiar faces, people Olson saw twice a week at B.B. Wolf ’s, playing in a league where, rather than money, they racked up points and bragging rights. Olson played for the cost of two bottles of water, wrapped in soggy paper napkins, purchased from the bar. It was lighthearted and fun, different from the higher stakes on the night he was shot, July 17, 2014, when Olson, who was managing the bank, cashed players such as Leonetti in and out for hundreds of dollars.
The people at the dive bar largely didn’t know the trauma Olson went through; trauma that bubbled up again a week before, in a Fort Bend County district courtroom, when he took the witness stand and pointed at the man he believed shot him, a 28-year-old named Eric Norris, who in the middle of that trial decided to plea guilty in exchange for three life sentences to Olson’s robbery and assault and Leonetti’s murder.
Olson watched everyone hug Leonetti’s family when the plea was done. He knew that his own wife, daughter and sons could so easily have been the ones who needed to be comforted; that he so easily could have been the one dead.
“Chuck, but for an inch, your wife would be here right now,” Olson remembered Leonetti’s mother telling him in one of their first meetings with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office. But for an inch.
Olson this Thursday night, wearing an Astros jersey, sandals and jeans, now barely could find the spot with his fingers where the bullet entered the left side of his neck. His dark gray curls covered the scar on the right. To meet him is to feel you’re meeting someone warm, who cares to get to know you, who wants you to get to know him. But he also now was feeling the suppressed thoughts about the shooting creeping back to the surface. He no longer had dreams that had him jumping to the floor, shouting “get down!,” but, after the trial ended, he noticed his temper shorten.
Yes, Olson lived, but part of what haunts him still is that he wasn’t just there that night playing poker, he organized it. His fingerprints, as he said, were all over that event — not culpable fingerprints, but fingerprints nonetheless.
“It was my office building,” he said. “It was my chairs. My tables. The barbecue I bought. The people that I hired and asked to help.”
It’s a thought that saddens him, a thought that isn’t easy to reconcile. Every morning, during his walk, he pauses at a bench across from the barbecue restaurant where he bought the food that night, and remembers.
Pressing his luck
This was his life now, after the crime, after the trial, and he wasn’t sure exactly how to live it. Was he supposed to do something important with the second chance he was granted? He was trying to consider that more. After all, this wasn’t how the story was supposed to go, not for Olson, or Leonetti, or their families.
One of his three sons, 25-yearold Jake, who lives with them, and his daughter, 27-year-old Cami, who visits frequently from Austin, flanked him on either side as the poker game started. Life was sometimes mundane, sometimes painful, but he cherished his time with them. He manages real estate. Both said they considered him their best friend.
Back in their Missouri City brick home, on a peaceful lot that looks out on a lake, was his 52-year-old wife of 31 years, Cari. She prefers not to leave the house. Being in public causes her panic attacks, which make her feel like she’s dying, and then overwhelm her with shame. She remembers getting the call from her brother, also there that night, who told her that her husband was being flown to a hospital. She remembers driving, singing to Christian music, to the hospital, where she fainted. She dreaded nighttime now. She wanted to stay awake, to protect her family. She no longer trusted others.
The Astros game was on the TVs at B.B. Wolf ’s. They were losing. A variety of music piped through the speakers. Cami left to watch the game, kissing her dad goodbye. Olson teased other players, encouraged his son, sang to the lyrics of a country song. “I feel like Jesse James.” With a reporter hovering, he told them about what happened to him, matter-of-fact, like they were talking about anything else.
He was doing badly in the game, until he was doing well, and with himself, his son and one other remaining about two hours after the game’s 7 p.m. start, he shoved his pile of chips forward and went all in. He thought he had a good hand, a straight, low ace. Usually, he could read his son. Not this time. Jake had 3,4, 5, 6,7, a higher straight.
“Oh, you killed me,” Olson said.