Ryan’s redemption
From NFL failure, addiction and prison to being a sobriety and recovery advocate. When Pamela Zeugin lost her husband, she healed like Forrest Gump — by running.
Steve Dorfman
How many women are living the fairytale life they dreamed of as girls?
Pamela Thompson Zeugin was — complete with her handsome prince, Jean Pierre.
They wed just t wo months after they began dating. For 22 years, they lived, laughed and loved with passion — calling each other “mon amour” and raising t wo daughters, Gabriella and Amanda.
Jean Pierre was a private chef for two families in Palm Beach. Pam was a high school teacher before opening International Kids Zone, a preschool.
Pam jokes that she couldn’t take Jean Pierre anywhere because “he’d say such inappropriate things sometimes,” but anyone who knew him was richer for knowing him. He once literally took the Guy Harvey shirt offff his back and gave it to a man who admired it.
In 2006, Jean Pierre had a heart attack, which resulted in quadruple bypass surgery. While he was hospitalized, his doctors discovered that he had a rare form of liver cancer.
Doc tors gave him just four months to live, but he defied the odds.
Jean Pierre braved surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and, fifinally, a liver transplant, allowing him to attend Gabriella’s high school graduation in May 2007. This was all the more special because she was valedictorian of her class.
He lived until Jan. 17, 2009, just four days short of his 63rd birthday.
Devastated by his death both emotionally and fifinancially, Pam struggled to answer the question: “Why in the world, if there is a God, would He take my husband, when we were so happily married?”
She started breaking out in hives that often made her face
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