Helen Cooke Jones

I was born in Ithaca, New York in 1928. My dad was a construction worker---a carpenter and
my mom cleaned houses. I had two younger siblings but they both died before they made it to seven.
So I was pretty much an only child. I was the center of all my parents attention, and maybe thats why
I got into acting. I got to be the center of attention in all my school plays. And I loved it, that feeling---
so the moment I finished high school-this was right after World War II-I moved to Manhattan to
become an actress. I preferred acting in dramas, I even landed some roles in smaller off-broadway
productions. But after a few years I got tired of playing the struggling young actress so I moved back
to Ithaca. There was man. You dont need to know anything about him, except that by 1963 I was
alone and on the move with three daughters. We moved to Philly, I got a job working on a radio show
on the air and doing some work behind the scenes. We might have stayed longer, but there was a lot of
violence in our neighborhood. Mostly drug and gang crimes. And I asked my oldest daughter,
Clothilde where we should go. and that was easy for her. She said San Francisco, without even
thinking about it. There were these Rice-a-Roni commercials on TV that showed this place, this
mythical city were she could not imagine violence and she wanted to live there. So we piled into a U-
Haul with a few things and headed west. I think that was around 69. We found a small two-bedroom
in Japantown. We were the only black people there, but there would be these neighborhood Japanese
dance parties and we would throw on our kimonos and dance with them. I took on a lot of different
jobs, paid and unpaid. Teaching improvisation drama to kids and public and private schools, and
teaching kids in Oakland how to produce their own programs on radios and channel 25. I went back to
school. I got my masters degree at San Francisco State. I started a group to battle redevelopment of
Japantown, and I showed up to every town hall meetings to protest gentrification, I am tired of seeing
my friends pushed around.

If my dreams had all come true, I would have become a successful Hollywood filmmaker--powerful,
respected, earning millions. Instead I ended up dead in the pool house shower at Don Simpson's Bel-
Air home. Simpsons assistant found me overdosed on the morning of Aug. 15.

Id been staying at Simpsons a lot during that last month. You see, he produced Top Gun and
Crimson Tide so I figured he might be able to give me my big break. I would give him health advice
and hed help me out with my scripts.
I was a doctor, and I fully ran the emergency rooms all around California. But that was never my
passion. I took acting screenwriting classes, wrote two scripts and spent thousands of dollars filming
parts of the one closest to my heart. It was titled "The Legend of Kodiak," and in it the great Kodiak
bear is reborn in a man. It somehow brought everything together for me and I decided I wanted to
pursue it more.

And I struggled for recognition, I brought along my demons--an addiction to prescription drugs and
alcohol that dogged me for years. I checked into rehab twice and stayed clean for five years

But I began to slip again. In April, I got arrested.---I was in a tranceeither coke of shrooms-
standing naked on the ninth-floor ledge of an oceanfront apartment building .

I got married and divorced by the time I graduated from med school. My son is 19 and lives with his
mom in Idaho. I studied orthopedics in Washington, but I got bored of that and moved to LA to
practice emergency medicine. I liked the challenge of all the cases more. But Hollywood was always
there. If I saw a film shooting as I drove around, I would stop the car and strike up a conversation with
crew members. Even though I had a prosperous medical career, I wanted to be a part of this world. I
always looked the part. I got lipo and hair plugs. I ate healthy. I exercised. Thats where I met Dan
Simpsonat the gym. There were two scripts I wrote that I was working on. Playing God" was a
drama about a young doctor set in a hospital. But it was the other one, "The Legend of Kodiak" that
obsessed me. It's Bambi meets Rambo. When a Kodiak bear is killed by poachers, his spirit is reborn
in a man. Fulin would play that part. I hired an entire crew--from cinematographer to makeup artist--
to go out and begin filming it. I set aside his medical work to concentrate on the film, because I had to
keep traveling from Alaska to Utah to Montana to capture footage I wanted.
We were shooting on Kodiak Island and I wanted my star to dive into the cold ocean water with a live
salmon in his mouth, surface and shake his head--just like a bear. The actor hesitated--"I hate fish So
I did it first. I grabbed the fish, put it in my mouth, dove in in my jeans, came up and shook my head.
Just like a bear. Because if I could do it, then my actor could too. Kodiak was going to be mysignature
epic-a money machine. I had formulated ways to make tie-ins with videos, vitamins and a soundtrack.
It was going to make billions.

"It was going to make a billion dollars," said Ammerman's assistant Robert Kyncl, a friend of Fulin
from Prague whom Ammerman hired this spring.

Friends watched as Ammerman's mind spun out ideas the way a kaleidoscope creates images--whether
they were screenplays or multiple medical inventions ranging from spinal injury stabilization devices
to one-handed syringes. His inventions have been analyzed in medical journals and sparked interest
from several firms, including Johnson & Johnson and Zimmer Inc. Although none have been
manufactured yet, Anaheim-based Medical Systems International is pursuing the development of the
Ammerman Halo, a device that stabilizes the spine.

"Steve was a real shooting star," said Louis Pontarelli, who hired Ammerman to run the emergency
room at the Beverly Hills Medical Center and called him "an innovative inventor and brilliant creative
problem solver in the trauma unit."

But he couldn't solve his own drug problem. His tools of abuse were prescription drugs--
"amphetamines and anxiety drugs like Xanax," said Capri, who watched Ammerman's problem grow
from seemingly casual use in medical school to problematic use in the mid-'80s.

"1984 or '85 was when we first faced the problem," said Ammerman's father, Dick, a retired banker
who lives on the road in a 38-foot trailer. "I've asked him: 'Why do you do this?' He said he didn't
know. I said, 'Well, call me.' He never did. I said that for years. I said, 'If you feel the itch, call me.' "

To those who watched him in periods of drug-fueled disintegration, he was "a super-charged engine
that doesn't go anywhere," as physician assistant Chuck Nemejc put it.

Nemejc said he never saw Ammerman under the influence of drugs while working as a physician, but
he was appalled by the way Ammerman stumbled through the rest of his life. Nemejc describes him as
disorganized, inefficient and paranoid about the people around him.

*
Ammerman went into rehabilitation twice and even enrolled in a state-run drug diversion program
geared to helping medical doctors with substance abuse problems stay drug-free and keep their
licenses.

But in recent months, he had begun to slip.

In April, Ammerman was arrested by the Santa Monica police when he crawled naked onto the ninth-
floor ledge of the apartment building where he was renting. Neighbors told police that Ammerman
was jumping up and down and yelling, and leaped onto their balcony, pounding on the walls and
screen door of their apartment.

Capri noticed other changes. "I heard him on the phone once when he sounded like he had been on
Xanax and he admitted he was using it . . . which was a violation of his diversion program," Capri
said.

But Ammerman ducked Capri's admonishments and persevered with his Hollywood dream. Running
low on money, he went back to working part time as an emergency room doctor.

Simpson politely backed away from Ammerman's Kodiak bear script. "He told Steve the script is
good, it needs this and that, and once you make these changes, send it out to Disney, it's their kind of
movie," Kyncl said.

But Ammerman told his friends that Simpson was interested in "Playing God" and wanted to see the
script.

Ammerman was at Simpson's house almost daily during the last three weeks of his life. Ammerman
told friends he was acting as Simpson's doctor. His screenwriting collaborators say that Simpson,
meanwhile, was advising the fledgling filmmaker.

A registered nurse and other medical technicians were also seen regularly at Simpson's house, sources
said. Those sources also observed Dr. Nomi Fredrick, a West Los Angeles physician and

psycho-pharmacologist. Neither Fredrick nor any of the others would speak with The Times.

According to government sources, records indicate that Ammerman prescribed dextroamphetamine in

1990 and morphine in 1993 for Simpson.

Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator who has worked for the film producer since 1989,
acknowledged that Ammerman was often at Simpson's house during July and August, but denied that
Ammerman ever treated Simpson.

"Ammerman was never Don's doctor," Pellicano said. "There was no medical treatment going on for
drugs or for anything else . . . Ammerman was a hanger-on, one of many who just wouldn't leave Don
alone. It's unfortunate that this guy committed suicide, but honestly, we wish it would've happened at
someone else's house."

Simpson's personal life has been awash in stories of partying in the Hollywood fast lane. His lifestyle
is believed to have caused friction over the years with his longtime business partner, Jerry
Bruckheimer. The duo have ranked among Hollywood's top producers with three hit movies this year
alone--"Bad Boys," "Crimson Tide" and "Dangerous Minds."

Ammerman's father was stunned when he learned that his son's body was found Aug. 15 in the shower
of Simpson's pool house.

"He had been working real hard for the past three or four months to get clean," said his father, who
last saw Ammerman at John's graduation from high school in Boise in June. "He'd been doing a lot of
running and going to AA and he'd found a new girl he truly liked."

He said Ammerman had fallen in love with a 35-year-old flight attendant he met at a Starbucks in
Pacific Palisades. According to friends, they were inseparable until the night Ammerman died.

"I wouldn't get tangled with Hollywood for all the tea in China," his father said. "I think that's the
screwiest place in the world. I could never understand his infatuation with all that stuff."