Triumphs and Tragedies: A True Story of Wealth and Addiction

Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1960s. Sun, surf, swanky sand castles along the Strand, and a soundtrack of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” But the hang-loose life of the locals would soon be drowned out and painted black. The social storm brewing could turn even the most perfect wave into a brutal riptide.

Karl McMillen, Jr. deserved a piece of the Pacific paradise. He’d plumbed his way up from screwfittings and sweat into mega-business ownership and multimillions. He’d earned the azure-awesome view that he woke to every magical morning. And he’d earned the ideal family at his side. A dynamic wife and two bright, talented sons with sky’s-the-limit potential.


But that storm…

He never saw it coming. It hit hard and it hit fast. The grinding gales of addiction ripped everything he had apart.

How do you go from planning exotic family vacations and evaluating real estate investments to planning prison visits and evaluating rehab centers and criminal defense pleas? How do you watch your surfer champion sons transform into drug lords? Inmates? How do you watch your entire family die; one by one?And yet never stop fighting. What does it take to look in the mirror and search for the meaning of enabler? To face that you’re sacrificing your own livelihood for Scotch? To ride a sheer, pounding wave of triumphs and tragedies, and then pull out and paddle back for more?

It takes a rare and special person—Karl McMillen.

“Triumphs and Tragedies: A True Story of Wealth and Addiction” chronicles top-of-the-world success juxtaposed against a downside of life no one should have to suffer. A side that proves that there are some things money cannot buy.

How Karl weathered his terrible tempest is a huge part of his story; but so is what he has done with that survival. How he has used his powerful wealth as ammunition to fight for others. To strive to prevent anyone from enduring the tragedies he and his family went through. That is his true triumph.