Joe Pace is missing a ring.

He won that ring back in 1978, the year he and his Washington Bullets teammates became NBA champions by beating the Supersonics in Seattle. A decade later, Pace pawned the ring for $500.

The sale of his ring shows just how high Pace flew — and how low he sank. After playing professional basketball for two years and competing in a slew of international leagues for 10 years, Pace lost everything. His two ex-wives no longer talked to him, his children didn't know him, and he was sleeping on the streets.

Now approaching 50, Pace has a roof over his head for the first time in over a decade. He lives in transitional housing and hasn't touched drugs or alcohol for seven months. Pace wants to coach youth basketball, but he has yet to find a job offer. For now, he's just taking it one day at a time.

Pace was far from homelessness in the late 1970s. He became a star playing basketball for Coppin State in Maryland. Though he stayed in college four years, he didn't earn a degree.

"I wasn't looking to graduate," Pace says. "I was looking for money."

Money arrived through an NBA contract to play for the Washington Bullets. But unlike today's professional athletes, players back then weren't guaranteed millions. As a back-up center, Pace was making $35,000 a year.

Pace also discovered he had a new role in basketball — a bench sitter. Disappointed by his salary and court time, Pace looked for ways to combat boredom.

"I was a time bomb waiting to explode," he remembers.

Though Pace wasn't raking in a top salary, he was eligible for the side benefits of professional basketball. Women paid him to be an escort. Rich businessmen invited him to dinner, and gave him money for signing autographs. Free drinks and drugs could be had just about everywhere.

Partying with his teammates didn't lead to close friendships for Pace, but his two years with the Bullets did have highlights — such as celebrating in Seattle after clenching the NBA title. That moment marked the pinnacle of his career.

A downhill slide began after Pace was traded to the Boston Celtics the following season. He showed up at preseason camp and immediately became unhappy with his sideline role. Isolated from his fellow teammates, Pace made a decision that changed the rest of his life. He jumped on an airplane to Rome without telling a soul.

It's hard to imagine giving up an NBA career just as it was beginning, but that's what Pace did. He regrets the decision every day.

"One more year in the pros would have earned me a pension," Pace says. "I closed doors by leaving the NBA."

With no plan in mind, Pace wandered around the Rome airport until an old Italian woman told him she would take him home. The Black foreigner who stood nearly seven feet tall fascinated her.

Pace settled into her household in the countryside outside Rome, and it wasn't long before a crowd and TV crew arrived to see the tall basketball player. Once word got out on the new arrival, an Italian basketball team recruited him.

Pace moved to a high-rise apartment in Rome. Influenced by fellow basketball players with drug habits and suppliers, Pace soon fell into his old pattern. One day, after sniffing a mixture of cocaine and heroine, Pace went into a coma. The fire department used an extension ladder to break into his apartment window.

In the United States, news crews got word that an American basketball player had overdosed and died in Italy. His mother and wife — whom he'd met in Baltimore and married only recently in Rome — saw the reports and believed he was gone. Later, they heard that Pace had survived but was in prison for drug use.

Pace spent 15 days at the prison, which he said looked like a 100-year-old dungeon. He was fed a meager diet of fruit, bread, and water. After two weeks of lobbying from Pace's friends and team, the judge let Pace out with a $9,000 fine and banned him from Italy.

Back in Baltimore, Pace had a brief reunion with his wife and baby son, born while he was absent. But soon he began traveling again, spending six-month stints with basketball teams in Mexico, Spain, Panama, England, Venezuela, and Argentina. He continued to abuse drugs and alcohol, limiting himself just enough to function on the court. During his time overseas, Pace's wife divorced him.

"She said I loved basketball more than her," Pace says, smiling sheepishly. "It was true."

Pace's last stop was Argentina. He planned on five months there but ended up staying eight years. The reason was a woman, who Pace married and had a baby girl with.

But brief family bliss ended in 1993, when Pace developed gangrene in his spine and was airlifted back to the United States for surgery. His Argentinean wife didn't want to leave her family to join him, and her family was happy to see him go because of his drug use. After urging from her parents, she divorced him. Pace hasn't seen his ex-wife and daughter since.

The surgery ended Pace's basketball career and for the first time, he had nowhere to go. During his time overseas, his father had died of brain cancer and his mother had fallen out of a second story window and lay in a vegetable state. Two ex-wives no longer wanted to be around him. Though he'd spent four years at a university, he had no degree and the reading level of a third grader. He had no resume or work experience outside of basketball. After recovering from surgery, Pace took to the streets; for the next decade, he was homeless in 10 different cities. Sometimes he slept in shelters, but more often he preferred the solitude of camping out under bridges or in parks. He did the odd job here and there and collected cans. Panhandling never worked, as his lanky 6'11" frame proved a quick magnet for police officers. He drank beer and took drugs when his back hurt, or when he just wanted to forget.

Last April, Pace hopped on a bus from Atlanta to Seattle. He chose the city because it was the last spot that something truly great had happened to him: the NBA championship.

Once in Seattle, Pace heard about the Millionair Club Charity, which helps homeless people get back on their feet through job placement and counseling. Pace liked the sound of the name. He showed up to find out what kind of work the club might be able to land for him.

"They said, 'Well, Joe, we want to help you, but you've got to leave drugs,'" Pace recalls.

Pace wanted to, but it wasn't easy. He remembers drinking a case of beer while sitting on one of the waterfront piers, wondering if he should just jump into the water and get it over with. After that night, he decided to enter a drug rehab program.

Seven months have passed since Pace completed the program, and he hasn't touched drugs or alcohol since. For the first time since he started abusing drugs in 1976, he cries again. "I'm no longer numb," Pace says.

He credits the Millionair Club with his progress. After achieving sobriety, he began taking day jobs through the club, doing yard work and construction projects.

"When the Millionair Club started helping me, I felt like a person again," Pace says.

It was on one of the day jobs that Pace met Tom Omley. A tax strategist who battled with alcohol and has been sober for 33 years, Omley was impressed with Pace's charisma and work ethic. When Omley told other day workers that they could leave after six hours of labor, they took the offer; Pace insisted on remaining for a full eight.

It wasn't long before Omley opened the doors of his home to Pace, giving him free access to come and go as he pleased. At Christmas, Pace celebrated with Omley and his family.

Several months ago, Omley established the Change of Pace Foundation to help Pace back into the working world. Omley thought that if an employer wouldn't hire Pace, perhaps donations could provide his salary. That way, someone could hire Pace without paying for him — a risk-free venture. Omley has faith that the donations will serve a good cause.

"I believe Joe has quit drinking, or I wouldn't have done this," Omley says.""He has a NBA ring, so at some point in his life he had discipline."

So far, the only donation is a 1972 van, delivered to Pace after KOMO 4 aired his story. The van sits in front of Omley's house; Pace tinkers with it on weekends.

For a time, Pace kept the peace at the Millionair Club, wearing a black security guard coat. The club hired him four months ago on a temporary basis.

"Joe has a great deal of integrity," says Doug Hamre, who manages the labor program for the Millionair Club.""He's an honest man trying to deal with an addiction."

Pace hopes that others will recognize that integrity. He knows what he wants the foundation donations to be used for: a program where he teaches basketball to underprivileged youth, sharing both basketball and life lessons. So far, no one has taken a chance on him.

"I'm on the probation stage," Pace says. "People are waiting to see if I go back to the old Joe."

Pace is trying to keep his promises these days. When he meets this reporter for coffee, he shows up 10 minutes early.

"If I was still drinking, I'd never have come," Pace admits.

Everyone wants Pace to make it. In person, he's a gentle giant with a smile that won't grow too big because he doesn't like people to see his missing two front teeth, knocked out during a basketball game in Mexico.

His supporters are growing: staff members at the Millionair Club; strangers who recognize him on the street as that basketball player from the news; Omley, who knows firsthand where Pace has been; and Pace's cousin in Tacoma, who saw the KOMO 4 segment and learned that the cousin she'd believed to be dead was in fact alive.

And good things are happening, step by step. A Puget Sound area high school invited Pace to talk to its athletes in April. Pace knew just what he'd wear Ð gym shoes and sweats — and how to stand — in a gymnasium, basketball in hand.