Worth More Dead

succeeded. In the meantime, Cheryl worked two jobs: days at Bay Ford, and on weekends and some evenings she clerked at PJ’s Market at Woods Road and Mile Hill Drive in Port Orchard. Sometimes when she worked the evening shift, then switched to days on Saturday and Sunday, she closed up PJ’s at eleven and returned to open the store before seven in the morning. She also did the books for her boss. Cheryl had once taught math and was adept at bookkeeping and business matters.
    With her careful budgeting and Roland’s growing clientele of judo students, the Pitres were able to purchase their first home. It was a triple-wide mobile home on Westway in Port Orchard. Although it was about twenty years old, it had been kept up by the previous owners. It had wall-to-wall dark shag carpeting. They furnished their new home with pieces they picked up at yard sales or at bargain prices. Roland saw that the detached garage would make a perfect studio for his self-defense classes. He would have his own dojo.
    “They looked like a normal suburban couple,” Greg Meakin remembers. “My wife and I were very friendly with them, and a lot of the young people who took judo lessons from Roland looked upon their place as a second home.”
    Roland had contacted the local YMCA to arrange for a space where students of the art could meet. Judo was an offshoot of the much more violent jujitsu. Judo was the creation of Jigoro Kano, who visualized the graceful and powerful body movements as a sport, a nonviolent one. Kano, who died in 1938, was the ultimate master of judo, a holder of the highest degree of black belt. Pitre told students that Kano had inspired him and claimed to have attended the Kodokan Institute in Japan, the Yale or Harvard of judo instruction.
    Pitre was very impressive and garnered a lot of attention in Kitsap County. The Port Orchard Independent published a two-page spread on his Port Orchard Judo Academy that featured photographs of Roland, his daughter Bébé, and several of his students.
    Among his students were two brothers who met Roland when he was working as a salesman at Bay Ford. He sold their parents a car and casually mentioned his classes to the boys. The teenagers had had some previous judo instruction and were excited about signing up at the Port Orchard Judo Academy.
    “We took the foot ferry between Bremerton and Port Orchard,” the younger brother, Isak Nelson,* remembers. “He was still teaching out of the Y at that point. Roland and Cheryl became like my family to me, even closer than my family for a while.”
    Isak was sixteen then, and Pitre rapidly became his hero. Looking back with the wisdom of an adult, he recalls things that didn’t quite add up, but he didn’t recognize deception at the time.
    “I remember that Roland asked me to stay after class the first night, or maybe it was the second night I was there. He said that he and Cheryl needed to talk with me. But it was Roland who did the talking. He said, ‘There’s something I want you to know about me. I want to be honest with you.’ ”
    Isak listened intently.
    “I’ve done time,” Pitre told him, “for stealing some money from a convenience store. I just wanted you to know so you can make up your mind about whether you still want to study with me.”
    Cheryl only nodded slightly as her husband explained his past to the teenager. It didn’t seem so bad to Isak, who admits that he himself was something of a heller as a teenager. He had had to perform community service for a scrape he’d gotten into. Roland’s honesty about being in prison only made him seem like a nicer guy to Isak. He didn’t need any time to decide that he would stay with the judo academy.
    “It was so rare for me to meet an adult that I could really talk to, who really seemed to understand me.”
    Isak and some of his other students helped Roland move mats into the garage. The dojo was a great place to hang out, to practice, to visit. “Classes were sporadic,” Isak says. “Sometimes, Cheryl and Bébé practiced when I was there, and sometimes Roland taught regular classes.”
    For Isak, Cheryl and Roland were the perfect substitute parents. He was always welcome. He thought of Bébé as a little sister, and often babysat for her.
    As for Cheryl, Isak recalls a wonderful woman. “She was just the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. She was so kind and giving. She taught me how to cook. When I had my first girlfriend, I brought her over for