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Man pays for his part in steroid case

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published September 25, 2007

John Todd Miller is upset.

The Wesley Chapel man is upset that people think he's a monster. That people say he pretended to be a doctor as he injected a 13-year-old with steroids.

Even after all the suspicion about baseball home-run king Barry Bonds using steroids and the juiced-up professional wrestlers dying young, Miller doesn't quite get why anyone would still be mad at him.

Miller, 39, worked as an unlicensed doctor's assistant at the Pasco Medical Clinic and Physicians Wellness Institute until investigators closed down the business four years ago, seized vials of steroids and a long client list of professional wrestlers, body builders and law enforcement officers.

The feds didn't seem to mind him giving steroids to the grownups. But Miller was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week after he pleaded guilty to illegally giving steroids to a 13-year-old amateur in-line roller skater in 2003.

Back then, lots of folks knew the clinic on W Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was a steroid dispensary. At the time, the kid's father, James Gahan, formerly of Lady Lake, wanted his son to do well in an upcoming event in China. So he and a trainer took him to Miller for shots of testosterone, a male hormone that builds muscles and increases strength.

But it's illegal to give steroids to a minor without a doctor's permission. Although Miller wasn't a doctor and wasn't licensed to give steroid injections, prosecutors said he was only too happy to oblige.

Miller readily admits that he gave the boy steroids. But he still can't bring himself to admit that what he did was terrible. At his sentencing in federal court, he said he was just trying to help the boy, whose high testosterone levels suggested that he had been taking the steroids for a while.

"It was a way to protect him, to keep him from getting shots from wherever he was getting them," Miller told me in a telephone interview the day after he was sentenced. "All we did was save the kid from someone else who gave him too many steroids. We weren't the monsters who hurt the kid. It was the kid's dad who did that."

He's wrong. They all did. And they'll have to pay.

The dad, James Gahan pleaded guilty to providing steroids to his son and is in jail awaiting sentencing. It was he who had tipped off authorities about Miller's steroid operation after the two men fell out. The son's trainer, Phillip C. Pavicic, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison.

A doctor who worked at the clinic died before any charges were brought against him.

For Miller, a year and a half in prison is only part of his sentence. He can't work in the medical field again (he had an expired X-ray machine operator license). He went bankrupt and lost his house, cars and his 15-year marriage.

"I lost everything," he said.

When he gets out of prison, he can start over. But what about the kid who he injected with steroids? The antidoping agency stripped him of his medals and suspended him for three years. His father sued Miller and the former trainer for physically and psychologically damaging his son. Can you believe it?

Now that's something to get upset about.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 24, 2007, 20:32:59]