Scott Fujita retires from pro football atop a Peruvian peak in South America.

Of all the places to retire from a long and fruitful career as an NFL linebacker, Carmel Valley resident Scott Fujita chose sunrise at Machu Picchu, 8,000 feet high in the Peruvian Andes – after helping lug two friends with neurodegenerative Lou Gehrig’s Disease (or ALS) up the steep stone steps of the Inca Trail over the course of 11 hours. And after signing a symbolic contract with the New Orleans Saints with whom he won a Super Bowl and a new start – for himself and the city – so he could retire a Saint.


“It felt like a great time to make the announcement,” he says. “On top of the world and the end of the road.”


And at the start of a new day.


“I guess where one journey ends, another begins,” he adds in a YouTube “press conference” retirement video, during which he fields goofy questions in Spanish from the various Peruvian porteros that helped them up the hill. 


But it easily could have been a lot less glorious.


Within the first hour of lifting his pal and former Saints teammate Steve Gleason on a wheelchair rigged to be carried single file like a rickshaw throne, Gleason almost got a whole different type of adventure travel.


“I kind of lost my footing on the edge of a cliff,” Fujita says. “We have Steve all strapped in, but all of sudden he’s at a 45-degree angle staring face down over a canyon. I was thinking, ‘This is not a good idea. We should not be doing this.’ Miraculously, we were able to course correct and set him down.”


Fujita looked Gleason in the eyes and made out a mumble from the one-time Saints special teamer of the year: “‘This is fucking awesome,’” he told Fujita.


“I thought, ‘Carry on, man!'” Fujita says.


When they reached the ruins, it was only after spending three hours in the dangerous darkness of the high jungle, the longest their guide, who counts 600-plus summits, had ever seen a group take to arrive.


The next morning, Fujita called it a career, using the hike as a metaphor: “When you get to the end of it, there’s a huge sense of accomplishment, but it’s not so much about finishing the trail or winning the big game, it’s about the journey and the people around you.”


The singular style of his announcement was fitting, because he has long conducted himself with vision and voice wholly apart from the massive majority of his peers. 


On the field, he played with the abandon of the walk-on he was at Cal – “I felt I had to outwork everyone else,” he says. “I was the guy in at 6 in the morning, working out till I threw up” – and the style of a 250-pound, 6-foot-5-inch samurai, leading New Orleans’ cerebral Super Bowl defense and bowing like one after sacks.


“New Orleans was a chance to do something bigger than football,” he says.


That philosophy informs what he does off the field and – with apologies to a few fellas named Montana, Rice, Lott and Seau – makes Fujita my favorite football player.


After growing up facing discrimination derived from questions about his Japanese name (he was adopted), he spoke out about internment camps where his dad was born. At Berkeley he wrote for the school paper. He called out George W. Bush on Katrina – after he was the first free agent to sign with the post-hurricane, 3-13 Saints – and pressed Barack Obama to visit when he came into office. He has advanced adoption programs and breast-cancer initiatives. He advocated for abortion rights, bringing the troops home sooner, same-sex marriage and wetlands conservation, at one point giving half his playoff check to coastal recovery. He’s already planning his next adventure with Gleason as part of his work as a boardmember for Team Gleason and its work to empower those with ALS while uncovering a cure.


“For me, I have a window of opportunity,” says Fujita, who played a total of 11 seasons. “The average [NFL] career is 3.6 years. Today people want to ask you questions, know what you think, but no one’s gonna care in a few years. Players do have a responsibility to kids and organizations who care what we think.”


“He cares about issues that matter to everyone,” New Orleans sportscaster Fletcher Mackel told the Weekly after Fujita signed with the Cleveland Browns, “not just millionaire athletes.” (Check out his favorite and least favorite NFL memories on the Weekly blog, where he riffs on everything from the bounty scandal to the first game after the flooding.)


He’ll come back to Carmel Valley to consider options like writing and TV while spending time with his one-time college sweetheart wife and their three young daughters.


“I can’t imagine a better place to settle down,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of ground to cover hiking, scuba diving, surfing and getting familiar with Big Sur.”


Fortunately covering ground – as an activist, player and person – has always been a big part of Fujita’s game.