By Amanda Dyer

Hours out of jail, Zachary Solomon Miller, 25, searched through the contents of a beige-colored sac, which he dubbed his “Santa Rita suitcase.”

He chuckled after finding his hot pink, Kaiser Permanente T-shirt in which he was arrested 10 days ago. Miller, known as Solo by friends, was ordered to stay away from People’s Park, UC Berkeley’s homeless sanctuary, as a condition of his probation, resulting from a September arrest and drug conviction, according to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Berkeley Police arrested Solo again in the park, where he’s lived for a number of years, on Oct. 6.

How Zachary Solomon Miller, an Ivy League student with a promising football career, came to be “Solo,” a homeless drug addict, segregated from his community by the law, is an all too common story among Berkeley’s homeless population, say homeless experts and Solo’s friends, full of bad luck compounded by even worse decisions.

Devin Woolridge, the university’s site coordinator at People’s Park, said Solo’s story isn’t a whole lot different from the other homeless at the park.

“Drugs, alcohol and mental illness — the three are a problem in the park,” he said.

At six foot three inches tall, Solo towers over most people. His thick, brown beard matches the locks on his head, which, most of the time, he contains in a torn-off T-shirt sleeve.

Somewhere between Santa Rita County Jail and Telegraph Avenue, Solo came across a blue, button-down shirt. Within an hour of arriving back in Berkeley, he tore off the shirt’s right arm to display the tattoo he got in New York, where he spent a year at Columbia University. Years later, Solo also attended UC Berkeley.

Miller graduated from Tamalpais High School in Marin County near the top of his class in 2001, he said. He played middle linebacker on his high school football team, where he said he was recruited by Columbia University. At that time, Miller said, he weighed 235 pounds and could bench press 377 pounds.

Columbia doesn’t give out athletic scholarships, Miller said, so he was given an academic scholarship.

In preparation for his promising football career, Miller said he spent his free time studying tapes of famous linebackers and mimicking their moves. He knew he was going to make it to the NFL. He said he wanted to be one of the best linebackers to ever play the game.

He arrived at football camp at Columbia in the fall of 2001, and he stuck with it for a while, he said.

Then one day during camp, while running a drill, he decided he just couldn’t take it anymore.

“They (went) really hard on me, because they were trying to mold me,” Miller said.

He said he had been through hard practices, but nothing ever like this. The guys were much bigger, and he was getting hit harder than ever before.

He finished out practice, and he never played football again, he said.

“I said ‘I’m leaving.’ And I left,” he said. “I gave up on football.”

Miller felt devastated. For so long he had focused on football, he thought, and he couldn’t even make it at Columbia, hardly a serious college-football contender.

After losing football, Miller said, he began losing traction and sliding downhill. He started reading heavily, though more for pleasure than out of textbooks. Miller, who was born Jewish, recalls being very interested in Buddhism and not much else, certainly not school.

Robert Hornsby, spokesman for Columbia University, confirmed that Miller was enrolled at the university for two semesters until he withdrew.

Miller said after two semesters of poor performance, the university suspended him.

“I’ve come to terms with the truth, even though there’s a lot of shame for me in the truth,” Solo said, looking back over this dark period in his life.

Miller said he flew back to California disappointed. His parents took him to a psychologist, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. Miller was never convinced by the diagnosis, he said

Miller said he raised some money selling drugs before he left his parent’s house in Marin in June 2002. He took his 1989 Volvo station wagon and just started driving. He meandered his way to Venice Beach and Los Angeles, among other cities, before finally landing in People’s Park, where he’s been ever since. Somewhere along the way, he said he picked up the drug habit that emptied his savings account.

For a while, Solo seemed to get back on track. He enrolled in various Bay Area community colleges, he said, where he earned enough credits to transfer back to a four-year college. He applied for and was accepted to UC Berkeley, where he lasted four semesters, until he decided to drop out again.

UC Berkeley records confirm that Miller did attend the university.

He has no plans of ever going back.

“Cal’s a joke,” he said.

UC Berkeley is everything he hates about universities, full of cookie-cutter education and phony liberalism, Solo said.

While Woolridge said he’s never heard of a student living in People’s Park, Travis Williams, 33 and a park resident, said two to three UC Berkeley students end up there each year.

“Drugs have a funny way of just taking over you,” Williams said.

Shana Mac, another park resident, said she thinks Solo just got sick of the pressure of his life.

“Smart people have a lot of pressure on them,” Mac, 22, said. “A lot of intelligent people do drugs to escape their lives.”

There was a time when she, too, wanted a vacation from her life, Mac said. That’s when she ended up at the park. Unfortunately for her, Solo and most residents those vacations end up lasting longer than they expect.

Solo said, he is six units away from graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in sociology and political science. Four of those units, he said, would come from the thesis he’s supposed to write, if he ever decided to go back.

Solo’s friends, including Mac, are bewildered by the choices he’s made with his life. They say if they had his smarts, they could really do something. But Solo seems to be content with his lifestyle.

“I feel like I’ve always been subject to my potential,” Solo said.

Without any pressure to live up to his potential, perhaps Solo finally feels free from the expectations, he feels, he’s always had to meet.

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