John Rogers

He declined to say whether Suleman had expressed interest in the offer, but Czech indicated she had rejected it out of hand.

He did say that Suleman had accepted a much more modest offer from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — $5,000 to put a sign in her front yard proclaiming, “Don’t Let Your Dog or Cat Become an Octomom. Always Spay or Neuter.”

As an added incentive, the animal rights organization had said Wednesday it would throw in a month’s supply of veggie burgers and veggie hot dogs for Suleman and her 14 children, who range in age from 1 to 8.

“No porn. Just Peta. Nadya prefers animals over men,” Czech said in an e-mail exchange with The Associated Press.

When Suleman’s children were born in January 2009 it seemed inconceivable that a little more than a year later she might be scrounging up hot dog offers from an animal rights group. The arrival of the longest-surviving octuplets in history was hailed as a medial miracle and it appeared a joyful public was ready to line up to help raise them, providing free diapers, food and other necessities.

There was also talk of book and movie deals and perhaps a reality show along the lines of “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”

But public opinion quickly turned against her when it was discovered she was a single mother who had conceived eight children by in vitro fertilization when she already had six youngsters to raise. What’s more she was unemployed and surviving on a combination of student loans, disability checks for other children and workers’ compensation checks for an old back injury. At the time she was also living with her mother whose own home was in foreclosure.

Still, she made some money.

The European production company, Eyeworks, whose credits include “Breaking Bonaduce” and “The Biggest Loser,” signed a deal under which her children would earn nearly $250,000 over a three-year period.

Suleman also struck a deal with RadarOnline.com that came to light after the tabloid site was cited by the state labor commissioner for allegedly failing to get the required permits to videotape her children and for filming too many hours a day and too late at night.

But she also spent money, too. She’s been photographed shopping at expensive stores, getting manicures and working out.

Her father bought her current home in La Habra, a bedroom community of 60,000 southeast of Los Angeles, for $565,000, including a $130,000 down payment.

Under the terms of the deal, Haddadin said, he was to receive $4,000 in monthly payments, followed by the balloon payment, which was due March 10.

Suleman’s attorney has said Haddadin failed to disclose several major defects in the home, including one that leaves it susceptible to flooding during rainstorms.

“Toys were floating around in the garage,” during a recent storm, he said.

Haddadin angrily denied there were any problems with the house.

“It was in good condition,” he said. “I lived there 11 years and we had no problems.”

This week, they are praying for another miracle, one that will let him walk again, as they try to understand how someone who came so close to dying may now have to live the rest of his life paralyzed.

“He’s on a mission. He comes back. And then …” said his high school football coach, Dominic Monica, his voice trailing off as it thickened with emotion and began to crack.

Sullivan, who received a Purple Heart, figured he could once again be crazy Chris, the fun-loving, prank-pulling guy who was looking forward to getting together for a party at a friend’s house, just as he had done the year before.

It was approaching midnight on Dec. 23 when, according to Sullivan’s family, an argument broke out among some party-goers over the merits of various NFL football teams.

When punches began to be thrown, Sullivan, always the peacemaker, according to friends, stepped in to break it up. He was shot twice, one of the bullets ripping through his spine.

The shooter fled before police arrived. Ruben Ray Jurado, 19, surrendered to authorities three days later. On Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and is jailed on $1 million bail.

Shortly after he surrendered, Jurado’s lawyer, Michael J. Holmes, said his client was being beaten and kicked by party-goers and was defending himself when Sullivan was shot.

The soldier’s family and friends emphatically dispute that account.

“If Chris was in any way wrong, why did the guy run?” asked Peter Baltimore, one of Sullivan’s closest friends. “Why didn’t he wait until the cops got there and tell them his side of the story?”

And, he asked, why did Jurado, who once played football with Sullivan but was not a close friend, have a loaded gun?

“Any real friend of Chris would not have brought a gun to a party,” Baltimore said, stopping to rest his head in his hands and compose himself as he sat on a friend’s living room couch.

Sullivan remains hospitalized in critical condition. With a tube assisting his breathing, he’s only able to answer yes or no questions from family and friends by blinking his eyes.

He has shown signs of improvement, according to his 20-year-old brother, Brandon. When his mother recently told him one of his nurses was exceptionally pretty, he smiled and moved his eyes to check her out.

When he is strong enough, his brother said, he will undergo surgery.

After that, doctors have told the family they’ll have a better idea of his prospects for long-term recovery. For now, they say it appears he will remain paralyzed from the neck down.

It’s hard for friends to grasp that because no one they knew embraced life more than Sullivan.

He excelled at wrestling and football at San Bernardino High School in this gritty, working-class city of 210,000 that generally goes unnoticed by people passing through on their way to Las Vegas or mountain resort towns.

“The one thing that kept him away from playing college ball was his size,” Monica said. “He was probably 5-feet-10 and 180 pounds, but his heart was as big as a 6-foot-5, 300-pounder.”

A relentless prankster, he also pulled the greatest practical joke Monica can remember.

In the last game of his high school career, his team losing, the clock running out, Sullivan sought out the biggest guy on the opposing team, tackled him after the ball was dead, picked him up and attempted to toss him over his shoulder.

When the angry referee threw a penalty flag at him and shouted, ‘You’re out of here,” Sullivan pulled his own penalty flag out of his pants and shouted, “No, ref, you’re out of here.”

By the time Monica got to the field, everyone from the opposing team’s players to the referees was laughing.

“I said, ‘You played the whole game with a penalty flag in your pants?’,” Monica recalled. “He said, ‘Yeah, it was bothering me, but I had to wait for the perfect time to throw it.’”

After high school, Sullivan got into mixed martial arts, hoping he might someday make that a career. After several successful amateur bouts he had turned pro and won his first fight, although he never bragged about it.

“He doesn’t tell people because he doesn’t want people to be intimidated by him,” Baltimore said.

His ultimate dream, friends and family say, was to someday buy a nice home for his family and open a gym where he and all his friends could work out.

“He takes great care of his mother and his brothers and sisters,” said neighbor Michelle Mueller, who lives next door on a leafy block of modest homes that is tucked into a corner of town just below the foothills.

It’s a house Baltimore said Sullivan pressed the family to move to, to get his siblings away from street gangs.

As the family’s oldest son, it was Sullivan’s desire to provide for his single mother and four siblings that prompted him to forgo college for the Army.

“He was signed up to go to college, and he comes home right after school one day and goes, ‘Mom, I signed up for the Army instead,’” Brandon Sullivan recalls. “It was a shocker to all of us.”

Friends and family say Sullivan doesn’t see himself as any kind of hero because of his war injuries and doesn’t like to talk about what happened when he was stationed in Afghanistan last December.

Now, his coach is praying that he will be saved again.

“Everybody is,” Monica said quietly.

In honor of the film’s 65th anniversary, the City Council declared Friday “It’s A Wonderful Life Day” in Los Angeles.

To get people in the spirit, Councilman Tom LaBonge, several members of Capra’s family and a few others gathered at the director’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on a sunny holiday morning.

The section of the walk, it turns out, is one filled with cheesy souvenir shops and sex toy emporiums. They give it more the look of Pottersville, the disreputable place in the film that the evil banker Mr. Potter turns bucolic Bedford Falls into when Bailey isn’t there to stop him.

That didn’t dampen Friday’s celebration, however, which included Jimmy Hawkins, the actor who played Bailey’s 5-year-old son, Tommy.

As one of the last surviving cast members, the 70-year-old actor-producer said he considers it an honor to introduce new audiences to the movie.

When it debuted in theaters in 1946, “It’s A Wonderful Life” was actually a commercial and critical flop. But if that bothered Capra, he never let it show.

“My father always said that ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ was the best movie that he ever made,” Tom Capra said. “As a matter of fact, he said it was the best movie ever made.”

The film, whose story takes place at Christmas, became a holiday classic with the dawn of television, when families began to gather each holiday season to watch it.

It airs again Saturday night on NBC.

“It carried with it the message that you can find in each of my dad’s films. The message of hope,” Capra said. “Maybe like George Bailey, we should pause for a brief moment and examine our lives and see if we can make a difference as long as we never give up.”

In honor of the film’s 65th anniversary, the City Council declared Friday “It’s A Wonderful Life Day” in Los Angeles.

To get people in the spirit, Councilman Tom LaBonge, several members of Capra’s family and a few others gathered at the director’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on a sunny holiday morning.

The section of the walk, it turns out, is one filled with cheesy souvenir shops and sex toy emporiums. They give it more the look of Pottersville, the disreputable place in the film that the evil banker Mr. Potter turns bucolic Bedford Falls into when Bailey isn’t there to stop him.

That didn’t dampen Friday’s celebration, however, which included Jimmy Hawkins, the actor who played Bailey’s 5-year-old son, Tommy.

As one of the last surviving cast members, the 70-year-old actor-producer said he considers it an honor to introduce new audiences to the movie.

When it debuted in theaters in 1946, “It’s A Wonderful Life” was actually a commercial and critical flop. But if that bothered Capra, he never let it show.

“My father always said that ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ was the best movie that he ever made,” Tom Capra said. “As a matter of fact, he said it was best movie ever made.”

The film, whose story takes place at Christmas, became a holiday classic with the dawn of television, when families began to gather each holiday season to watch it.

It airs again Saturday night on NBC.

“It carried with it the message that you can find in each of my dad’s films. The message of hope,” Capra said. “Maybe like George Bailey, we should pause for a brief moment and examine our lives and see if we can make a difference as long as we never give up.”

In honor of the film’s 65th anniversary, the City Council declared Friday “It’s A Wonderful Life Day” in Los Angeles.

To get people in the spirit, Councilman Tom LaBonge, several members of Capra’s family and a few others gathered at the director’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on a sunny holiday morning.

The section of the walk, it turns out, is one filled with cheesy souvenir shops and sex toy emporiums. They give it more the look of Pottersville, the disreputable place in the film that the evil banker Mr. Potter turns bucolic Bedford Falls into when Bailey isn’t there to stop him.

That didn’t dampen Friday’s celebration, however, which included Jimmy Hawkins, the actor who played Bailey’s 5-year-old son, Tommy.

As one of the last surviving cast members, the 70-year-old actor-producer said he considers it an honor to introduce new audiences to the movie.

When it debuted in theaters in 1946, “It’s A Wonderful Life” was actually a commercial and critical flop. But if that bothered Capra, he never let it show.

“My father always said that ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ was the best movie that he ever made,” Tom Capra said. “As a matter of fact, he said it was best movie ever made.”

The film, whose story takes place at Christmas, became a holiday classic with the dawn of television, when families began to gather each holiday season to watch it.

It airs again Saturday night on NBC.

“It carried with it the message that you can find in each of my dad’s films. The message of hope,” Capra said. “Maybe like George Bailey, we should pause for a brief moment and examine our lives and see if we can make a difference as long as we never give up.”