Chile's Leon discovers family is fine after earthquake

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The phone rang in Hugo Leon's apartment Saturday morning at 3:30. The Nationwide Tour golfer who lives in the Jupiter, Fla., suburb of Tequesta, was sound asleep, and he didn't hear the phone ringing. Two hours later, Leon awoke to discover that an 8.8-magnitude earthquake, centered in Concepcion, Chile, had hit. Leon grew up in Santiago, about 300 miles north of Concepcion in the South American country which borders the Pacific Ocean to the west and Argentina to the east.

As the news began to sink in, Leon noticed a phone call had come in.

"I immediately tried to call my family in Chile to make sure everybody was safe," Leon said. "The phones weren't working, I guess, and I couldn't get through. My dad finally called at about 8 [EST] in Florida to tell me that everybody was OK."

Everybody includes his father and mother and stepmother, as well as three siblings. Another brother, Horacio, lives in Hammond, La., where he attends Southeastern Louisiana University, the same school Hugo graduated from in 2007.

"You grow up in Chile feeling the ground move all the time," Leon said. "Earthquakes are not that uncommon. I remember we were living on the 10th floor of an apartment building when I was a teenager and you could feel the building swaying. That sort of thing happened a lot. But the buildings are built for that sort of thing.

"But when it's a category 8, you have to be worried," Leon continued. "I'm sure the whole country felt it. It was a big one."

Leon hasn't been back to Chile since 2008 when he was playing on the Canadian Tour, competing at the Sport Frances Open in his hometown.

"I was planning on going home after (PGA TOUR) Q-School, but I only had conditional status (on the Nationwide Tour), so I decided to stay here and keep working on my game," Leon added. Although he missed earning full Nationwide Tour playing privileges at the National Qualifying Tournament, Leon had been playing well. Prior to Q-School, he traveled to Dongguan, China, in November and teamed with Martin Ureta to represent Chile at the OMEGA Mission Hills World Cup. There the duo tied for 12th.

Ureta, who also grew up in Santiago, lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., but is in Florida staying with Leon and working on his game. After Leon heard from his dad, Ureta was also able to account and verify the safety of all his family members still in Chile.

Unfortunately, Leon is no stranger to natural disasters. Living near New Orleans in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina bore down on the region, eventually leaving Leon stranded for six weeks on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain, northwest of New Orleans.

"This [earthquake] is scary and weird because I'm not there, and there is nothing I can do. But it does remind me of when I was in New Orleans for Katrina," Leon said. "We were stuck in Hammond for six weeks with no electricity. There were trees down all over the place, and we couldn't go anywhere. My roommate lost his car."

During that disaster, Leon lived on ready-to-eat meals distributed by the military, assisted people in the area and passed the time by playing, as he says, "a lot of soccer."

Now disaster has struck Leon again. He constantly checks the internet, watches TV and awaits additional updates by phone, and he understands a little of what his fellow Chileans might be experiencing. He takes a deep breath and thinks about his own situation. Leon missed qualifying for the Michael Hill New Zealand Open by a stroke, and he has yet to play a Nationwide Tour event in 2010. Not having played this season just doesn't seem as important as it did 24 hours earlier. "[The earthquake] is a tough situation," he said. "I'm just grateful my family is safe, and everything is OK. I can't complain."