Big Steve Comes Out On Top

In the atrium of Elm Street’s Superior Court, bail bondsman Big Steve handed his iPhone to Little Howard, who was waiting for his uncle to be arraigned for a probation violation. Big Steve showed off 25-year-old photos of a young man — on the brink of a career in professional wrestling — flexing in black briefs and a T‑shirt. ​“Dave Paradise,” the T‑shirt read.

Big Howard, an attorney sitting nearby, saw the resemblance. Little Howard was skeptical. He squinted at the phone, then over at Steve.

“Hell no,” he said, passing the phone back.

“Of course it’s me,” Big Steve said. ​“You think there’s two handsome guys like that in town?”

There’s only one Big Steve Tracey, despite the fact that he seems to have lived several lives in his 45 years: He was a teenage high-school drop-out, loading trucks on Long Wharf and dreaming of being a wrestling superstar. He was Dave Paradise, a WWF fall guy, throwing fake punches and suffering real injuries in the ring. He was a bouncer, a bounty hunter, a tow-truck operator.

These days, he towers amid the crowd at Superior Court, where he does business as a bail bondsman. A constant and unmistakeable presence, he stands head and shoulders above the lawyers, bailiffs, defendants, nervous relatives and crying babies who stream through the courthouse every day.

Just to see all 6‑foot‑6 and 415 pounds of him is to understand the name that appears four times on his glossy double-sided business cards: Big Steve.

Hanging with Tracey this week was a slower, less dramatic experience than watching his old WWF clips. It involved less heavy lifting than his days on Long Wharf did. Less potential danger than his bounty-hunting days. Less jousting than his early days doing bail bonds.

But the lesson was the same: At 45, Steve is still big. He still dominates the ring. Unlike in his previous quests to put that bigness to work, he has found a way to steer clear of bruises. And to make a good living.

Throughout his many lives, Big Steve’s bigness has been his biggest asset. It helped him survive punishing pile-drivers in front of thousands of screaming wrestling fans at the Hartford Civic Center. (Click the play arrow to see him fight Mr. Perfect.) It helps him to stand out now, and earn respect working in a different kind of arena, grappling with a different cast of tough characters.

“I got that presence people don’t forget,” Tracey said. ​“How you going to not see me? You can see me from your house.”

Every morning, Tracey and his partner, Art ​“Butch” DiAdamo, stroll up the steps of the courthouse to spend the day making deals to spring people out of jail. As bondsmen, they offer to put up bail money for arrestees in exchange for a fee. The fee, according to new state regulations, is 10 percent of the bond amount for the first $5,000, then 7 percent of the rest.

Under the same regulations, Tracey can’t solicit defendants and their families. He has to wait for them to come to him. It pays to be recognized as Big Steve, the bail-bonds guy everyone seems to know.

Holding court in the lobby of the courthouse, Tracey is a slow whirlwind of leisurely greetings and handshakes. Between phone calls, he fields questions from anxious moms and girlfriends worried about their men in lock-up.

“My husband was arrested last night,” a woman dressed in a white work uniform told Tracey Thursday morning while the bondsman was still climbing the courthouse steps. He’s being held on a $500 bond, she said. She had to get to work, wanted to know what to do.

“He’s going to have to go in front of the the judge,” Tracey said. He wore an untucked button-down shirt over jeans and leather loafers, his hair precisely combed back and a bluetooth device in his ear. ​“But trust me, they’re going to let him go.”

He passed her a business card. ​“Call me at 12:30,” he said. ​“I’ll tell you what happened.”

The woman thanked him and hustled down the courthouse steps to get to work.

Just past the metal detectors inside, a young woman in a Hooters T‑shirt passed Tracey. ​“I have money for you,” she told him.

A client, Tracey explained as he ambled on into the courthouse’s lofty three-story stone-columned atrium. She’ll make the payment to one of the couple of guys he and DiAdamo have working for them on commission, Tracey said. ​“I don’t write the bonds. I talk to the people.”

Tracey picked up a list of the day’s 21 arraignments and settled his bulk onto a worn wooden bench to peruse the paper with a practiced eye.

“There’s no money here today,” Tracey said after a minute of scanning the list. Thursday can be a slow day. Monday and Friday are the big days for bond-making.

Loading Trucks, Slamming Wrestlers

As he waited for the prisoners to be brought up from holding, Tracey reminisced.

Tracey was born into a big family in West Haven. In ninth grade he quit school. He’d had enough. ​“I just hated school,” he said.

At 16, he went to work on Long Wharf loading trucks and delivering meats. He worked from 3 a.m. to 4 p.m., six days a week. He was one of the youngest guys down there, but the biggest.

“I loved working down there,” Tracey said. He loved the early mornings — the air just feels better, cleaner, at that time of day. He still loves the morning; he gets up at 5:30 every day and gets his kids ready for school.

Tracey made good money as a teenager working on Long Wharf. He took home enough for him to pay for his own apartment and two motorcycles.

Meanwhile, he nurtured a lifelong dream — to become a professional wrestler.

“I wanted to wrestle so bad, my whole life,” Tracey said. ​“Ever since I was a kid.”

So at around age 18, he enrolled in wrestling school at Passariello’s Quest Gym in Orange. After putting in a 12-hour day at Long Wharf, he’d head over to wrestling class and learn how to take falls, how to do armbars, all the wrestling moves.

After a couple of months, he started doing local pro wrestling events. Some people had told him he’d never be a wrestler. But the old guys he worked with on Long Wharf were in his corner. ​“They liked when I started wrestling. They used to come to all the shows. They’d scream and yell.”

Tracey took the name Dave Paradise, partly inspired by a Meat Loaf song he liked ​“Paradise By The Dashboard Light.”

He made a T‑shirt with the name, with palm trees on it. (Years later, he learned a strange coincidence: His father, a New Haven cop, had once owned a bar off of Kimberly Avenue called Paradise.)

Tracey’s first bout was a tag-team match at West Haven High. He entered the ring there at around the time he might have been entering his senior year, if he’d stayed in school.

Tracey was paired with Mario Mancini, a more established local wrestler (and now a lawyer in East Haven).

“He took me under his wing,” Tracey recalled. They won their first bout.

It was all worked out beforehand, of course. ​“The promoter tells you who’s going to win,” Tracey said. It’s all a show.

Assignment: Let Dino Clobber You

Before long, Tracey moved up to what was then called the World Wrestling Federation. He was able to leave the Long Wharf job and wrestle full time.

Click the play arrow to watch him in a tag-team match against the Brain Busters.

His first bout for the WWF was at the New Haven Coliseum, he said. His family was all there, including his grandparents, among thousands of cheering fans. ​“They were all worked up.”

Tracey remembers his knees shaking, the butterflies in his stomach. ​“Oh yeah, I was nervous.” His job was to lose to Dino Bravo.

All the well-known WWF stars had a gimmick, just like the WWE stars of today. Bravo’s was that he was Canadian.

“He used to come out with the Canadian flag,” Tracey recalled. The Canadian national anthem would play over the PA and Bravo would have his Quebecois manager, Frenchy, with him.

How’d the match go? ​“Well, I lost,” Tracey said.

He always lost. That was his job. He was like the Washington Generals — just there to make the Harlem Globetrotters look good.

Tracey met with Bravo for a few minutes before the match to sketch out what would happen in the ring. That was standard procedure, supplemented by some cues during the action in the ring. Wrestlers would sometimes speak ​“carnie” quietly to each other in the ring, setting up the next sequence in code, Tracey said. Eventually the ref might tell them to wrap it up, each fight being timed to last a certain length.

It’s not easy being the fall guy, Tracey said. Your job is to make the star look good and to take a convincing beating in the process. ​“If I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m going to make you look like an asshole.”

Everyone says wrestling is fake, and it is, but it’s real enough to hurt. Imagine jumping knees-first off of a four foot ladder onto a mattress on the floor, Tracey said. After 10 or 12 times doing that, your knees are going to start to ache.

Do it for a few years, and you’re messed up for life.

Tracey said his bones ache now from his years as a wrestler. He groaned and cursed quietly as he stood up from tackling an egg sandwich Friday at the Java Cafe on Oranges Street, where he eats breakfast most days. It can take him 20 minutes to feel right after sitting down for a while, he said.

Tracey got one of his early tastes of the pain of wrestling during that first major bout against Bravo.

Bravo’s signature move was lifting his opponent straight up over his head and then slamming him down. But Tracey was too big for him.

“He couldn’t pick me up,” Tracey recalledd. Bravo got Tracey up only as far as his chest.

“He walked over and just dropped me onto my neck.”

Tracey hurt his lower back, not the first or the last of many injuries. It wasn’t uncommon to crack a few ribs against the ropes during a fight. He’d just keep going.

“Back then I was strong. You couldn’t stop me,” Tracey said.

Still, Steroids Needed

Tracey’s strength and size had him looming over most people outside the ring. But his God-given muscles weren’t enough for life inside a WWF ring. He started doing steroids to get bigger.

“To be a wrestler, you gotta look like a freak,” Tracey said. ​“You’re not going to go anywhere unless you’re a big guy.”

He shaved his chest. He hit the tanning beds. He oiled up before fights. And he hit the gym and injected steroids. It’s a decision, like dropping out of school, that he still regrets.

“Biggest mistake of my life,” Tracey said. The steroids made him sick, even ruptured his appendix.

A wrestler’s pay wasn’t great either. Tracey said he got only $200 or $300 per fight. WWF paid his expenses when he traveled to fight — to Canada, to Florida and elsewhere — but that was it for perks.

Linda McMahon, Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former WWE CEO, didn’t take care of her wrestlers, Tracey said.

“I’m not a fan of hers,” said Tracey, a registered Democrat. ​“They really didn’t treat people that work for them the right way.” Nobody got health insurance. ​“Nobody got nothing.”

Bam! With A Cop Car

After about five years in the WWF, Tracey had had enough. It wasn’t the physical pain, or the poor compensation. It was simple homesickness, he said. ​“I couldn’t stand being away from my family.”

He found himself back in New Haven, close to his family, but unemployed.

He couldn’t go back to his old Long Wharf job and face the old guys. ​“I was there where I started out. Now I gotta go back and be a failure?”

Again using his size as an asset, Tracey got a job as a bouncer. ​“I wasn’t really educated. What was I going to do?”

“I didn’t like bouncing,” he said. Tracey gave it a couple of months. ​“Then I went and became a bounty hunter.”

He teamed up with another ex-wrestler, Dave Shultz. Tracey’s job was to find guys who had made a bond agreement and then skipped out on their court date, leaving the bondsman on the hook for the bail money. ​“I was OK at it. It was a good job.”

A bounty hunter deals with a rough crowd. Tracey had no fear, he said. ​“What are they going to do? I’ve already been through it all.” He never had to fight anyone, although he did got shot at once.

By this point, Tracey had kids to take care of. Bounty hunting wasn’t bringing in enough to make ends meet. He took a job at a Forbes Avenue gas station, working the overnight shift. Late at night, he’d hang out with the tow truck drivers at the station’s garage. He learned how to tow, then started his own tow business.

Tracey started out with one truck, working out of a friend’s garage. Before long, with DiAdamo’s help, he was able to buy Victory Towing in West Haven. In three years he had a half-dozen trucks. ​“We were jamming.”

To get there, he had to battle another tow operator in town, a guy who had told him, ​“You’re never going to make it. This is my town.”

Tracey took it as a personal challenge. ​“Your town?”

He went to all the guy’s clients and undercut him, took all his business. Soon he had all the contracts in town: police, AAA, everything.

“We were doing really well,” Tracey said.

Until the accident.

Tracey said one of his trucks was hit by a speeding West Haven cop, heading to an emergency call. The cop broke his neck. His driver wasn’t at fault, but all his business was put on hold while the investigation was underway.

Following the advice of DiAdamo, who has been ​“like a father” to him, Tracey sold the trucks and went to work for DiAdamo as a bondsman.

Battling It Out in Court

At that point, about seven years ago, DiAdamo (at left in photo) ran a bail bond business with a guy named Fitch, who was even bigger than Tracey, over 600 pounds.

Tracey and Fitch didn’t get along. ​“He didn’t like me.” Eventually DiAdamo and Fitch split up, and Tracey and DiAdamo became partners.

Both companies worked the Elm Street courthouse, battling for business with the families of defendants. The rules were different back then. You could solicit people as a bondsman. ​“We were all fighting with another,” Tracey said.

Then Fitch passed away. His company fell apart and DiAdamo. Tracey hired his guys to work for them.

These days, DiAdamo and Tracey have the majority of the bail bonds work in the courthouse.

Business has been good over the years, apart from the recent economic downturn. Tracey said he lives in a house filled with toys in East Haven with a $7,000 security system and a flat screen TV in every room. He helps take care of his family too, he said.

“I love money,” he said. ​“I always wanted money.”

Tracey recently bought a white 2009 Corvette to add to his black Hummer and his custom Harley, painted with the image of a handcuffed skeleton reaching through the bars of a jail cell. He’s also got a tiny SmartCar wrapped with ads for DiAdamo and Tracey: ​“You ring, I’ll spring.”

People love it, Tracey said. Big man, little car. ​“They laugh their asses off.”

It’s all part of the winning brand that’s served him for years. No one forgets Big Steve.

“Does Your Mom Work?”

On a recent morning in court, a young man in glasses and a short-sleeved plaid shirt approached Tracey. There’s a warrant out on him in Cheshire. He was going to need a $50,000 bond.

“You work?” Tracey asked. A bondsman needs to know he’s making a safe investment.

He said he works in a Mexican restaurant. ​“I can show you pay stubs.”

Tracey wasn’t satisfied. ​“Does your mom work? Will she sign for you?”

Tracey told him the full fee: $3,650. He’d need $1,800 up front. He’d have 15 months to pay the rest.

“All right, I’ll call you. Thank you, sir,” the man said. He walked away with a business card. ​“You ring, I’ll spring.” Big Steve.