As a Kalakaua Intermediate School student, Chris Faildo picked up a bodybuilding magazine from a Kalihi news rack, little knowing its pages would serve as a road map for a remarkable life.

By the time he finished flipping through Muscular Digest, he was both mesmerized and challenged, his future calling ringing loud and clear. "I knew what I wanted to do," he recalls. "Just to look at those guys; they were incredible. I never knew a physique could get that way."

Now, nearly 30 years later at age 41, Faildo has long stood among the "incredible" himself as he prepares to add the final chapter to a stellar competitive career, leaving Sunday for South Korea, where he will lead the U.S. team in the World Amateur Championships of bodybuilding Oct. 27 and 28 as its captain and overall champion.

He earned that standing in June at the Team Universe Championships in New York where, despite being in the welterweight class, the 5-foot-4, 165-pounder towered above all as the overall winner, the pinnacle of a career built on perseverance.

With that the "time in the sun" that he had repeatedly promised himself while holed up in his bedroom painstakingly pumping a beginner's set of Sears & Roebuck weights in the early years has long since arrived. The questions his schoolmates posed while watching him give up fast food and other sports have been emphatically answered. The sacrifice of going to weddings and parties and adhering to a strict diet of foods he lugged along with him found its reward years ago.

The trail of gold, silver and bronze medals that began with the Mr. High School title while at Farrington in the early 1980s and has taken him through U.S. and Pam Am competitions ends in Korea, he maintains, win place or show.

"There's no doubt, totally, I'm calling it quits," to dedicate more time to his printing business and work as a personal trainer. "This will be my final (competitive) show," Faildo said.

As such, a title, "would be just the icing on the cake, if I can pull it off." Actually, the icing on a Pop Tart for him since it is what he has craved most since embarking of a strict training regimen and even more ironclad diet since May. "My mother is going to get a whole box of them, strawberry, and bring them to Korea for after the competition."

Then, he plans to celebrate with his wife Debbie and family and friends, loading up on sushi, ice cream, pizza and, maybe, some doughnuts, too. "But only for about a week and then it is back to a healthy diet and the gym," Faildo said.

The lessons in discipline acquired from more than a quarter-century pursuing the top of his sport remain ingrained. The dedication he exhibits in regular workouts at Gold's Gym steadfast. "I have to practice what I preach with my clients," Faildo said.

That Faildo has reached the heights of his career in its later stages says even more about him. It speaks to both a relentless drive to follow the dreams of his youth and a dedication to the principle of staying drug and steroid free at the expense of expedience. "I wanted to do it the right way being a true, natural lifetime steroid-free athlete," Faildo said. "Yeah, steroids can help you get a great physique but how much of that are you doing?"

The answers, he says, have allowed him to pass drug tests and polygraph examinations. More important they permit him to look the intermediate school student he once was in the mirror and, he would hope, maybe inspire some others who pick up a magazine or look online and see his picture.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.