Trojan big on helping others
Orange co Register 22Aug99 L3
By Jeff Miller: Register staff writer

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA: The USC Trojans have finally got back their biggest player ever, the 6-foot-5, 330-pound Faaesea Mailo. In his freshman year three years ago, the then 365-pound Southern California native was so big that they couldn't find a suit coat large enough to fit him for the team picture.

Of Samoan ancestry and raised mostly in Hawaii, Faaesea comes from a family of linebackers. But since he inherited all the bigness in the family, his is job of a lineman, though he was once recruited just out of high school to be a Sumo wrestler, but declined.

After is freshman year at USC, he elected to go on a mission. And where do you think the Church would send such a big Samoan Elder?

To northern Japan of course, where his size really made him stand out.

"One time, this little old lady looked at me, screamed and slammed the door," Faaesea said. "We decided to just leave a pamphlet in her mailbox."

While on his mission, he was able to convert two people. "That was a great feeling," he says. "It wasn't like, 'Yeah, we got one.' What made it great was that I did something to make a person happier. I changed a life for the better. It's just that good feeling you get when you help someone. Take that feeling and times it by 100. That's what it was like."

On his return this season when Mailo, who is still only a sophomore, walked into the coach's office, the coach immediately liked his maturity. He also liked the fact most of the doorway was occupied.