He wasn't like any other kid with hoop dreams and he was shooting for more than baskets.
Just to show him that I could do it and I could do it and prove it to myself that I'm here for a reason.
But he had a secret he couldn't share, an unbearable physical pain that went with it, until one day he had to make a choice.
We felt that it should be Michael's decision because it's Michael's body.
Mike Tajimi with a triumphant story of playing against the odds.
What would you do for a fortune in sunken treasure?
I believed in my heart that I could do it.
He would head into the unknown. What lured him to depth where few had gone before?
It seems like it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find that ship.
Well that was where a lot of people fought.
How would he find this precious cargo? Rob Stafford, ongoing for the gold.
Two countries exploding nuclear bombs. Should we have known it was coming?
It's hard to imagine another region of the world that has gotten less attention from American policy makers.
And what would happen if a nuclear attack really did happen?
Right now India is assumed to have between 20 and 50 bombs that are on the scale of the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Put a copy on the new and frightening nuclear arms race.
Dapline with Jane Fawley and Stone Phillips plus Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric and Maria Shriver.
From our studios in New York, here is Stone Phillips.
Good evening. We start tonight with a fantastic voyage, an underwater adventure to a famous shipwreck.
No, not that one. This ship went down long before the Titanic was even on the drawing board.
And it took with it something the Titanic didn't have, a spectacular glittering cargo.
What would you give for the opportunity to search for this sunken treasure and the possibility of finding riches beyond your wildest dreams?
Rob Stafford takes you on a sea hunt.
It's like a treasure of a lost voyage because it isn't until now that it's being rediscovered.
An explorer, scientist and inventor Tommy Thompson is talking about a story of treasure and tragedy.
An event that precedes the Civil War.
An incredible story that has all been but lost in popular American history.
If we're going to begin to explore the deep ocean, let's begin to look for those things that we know that we've lost.
Thompson is talking about a shipwreck loaded with gold.
A success Central American.
Some say the greatest American treasure ever lost, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And trying to find this ship of gold and bring her treasure home would become his obsession for more than a decade.
You believed you could do this. I believed in my heart that I could do it.
But believing and succeeding are two very different things.
Before his journey was over, Thompson would face not only incredible technical problems,
but insurance companies and dozens of lawyers, all ready to ruin his dream even if he could succeed.
Thompson's journey began where another one ended.
The year was 1857.
The middle of the California Gold Rush.
The SS Central America, a huge luxury steam ship, was on its way to New York.
When a hurricane hit 200 miles east of North Carolina in the Atlantic.
After a four-day battle to stay afloat, the ship sank.
153 people survived, picked up by passing ships.
Nearly 500 passengers drowned.
Also on board, an astonishing American treasure.
Thousands of pounds of freshly-panned and minted California gold.
And for more than 130 years, the shipwreck was lost, forgotten.
The passengers' belongings and the gold somewhere 8,000 feet below.
Until Tommy Thompson decided he was going to find it.
What did you think your chances of success were?
In the beginning, we said it was about a 10 percent chance of success.
But even with long odds, a group of investors was willing to bet on Thompson's reputation as an engineering genius.
And soon, the Columbus America Discovery Group was born.
The first challenge, find the SS Central America.
Fortunately, the sinking was well documented.
In fact, in 1857, it was the story of the day covered by more than 200 newspapers.
A major event for the entire country.
Certainly a major event for the entire country.
Bob Evans, Thompson's friend and operations coordinator, read every piece of information he could find about the disaster.
But even after years of research, they were still stuck with a huge search area.
An area the size of Rhode Island.
This ship is the size of a football field.
The ocean is a very big place.
What were your real chances of finding the Central America?
Well, it's a lot easier to find the needle in the haystack if you have a powerful magnet.
In this case, the magnet was called C-mark, a sophisticated sonar which uses sound waves to detect objects on the ocean floor.
For two months in 1986, they dragged C-mark back and forth for 1,400 square miles and found several possible wreck sites.
But even if one of those sites was the Central America shipwreck and Thompson was able to find it in this vast ocean, there was a more pressing challenge.
The investors who had already given him millions of dollars had an important question.
How would he get to the gold and bring it up undamaged?
Thompson had an answer.
So this is your baby?
This is my baby.
The baby's name is Nemo.
Thompson's creation.
An unmanned underwater robot.
Its nine cameras provide the eyes.
Its arms are the tools the crew will need.
And it's all connected by a fiber optic cable to a ship a mile and a half above on the surface.
A depth equal to the length of five Empire State Buildings stacked end to end.
On the ship, it takes six scientists and engineers to operate Nemo.
Using 3D glasses and computers, they sit in the control room and can find and retrieve items on the ocean floor.
This is what we'd like to think of as the prototypical lunar module for deep ocean exploration.
In 1987, with Nemo and a camera crew on board, Thompson set sail in search of the Central American.
For months they searched, but no ship.
The next year, they tried again.
First stop, a place that looked unusual on the sonar chart.
They never expected to find anything on the first pass, but incredibly, they did.
Oh, you know what that is.
Nemo's camera shot back stunning images of the sprawling wreck from a mile and a half below.
I remember that moment almost as if the ship was speaking to me.
And the ship was reaching out and telling us that we had found it.
One of the most compelling things about looking at the scene of the wreck is that it appears to be frozen in time.
Nemo sent amazingly clear pictures of the Central America.
She had slept on the ocean floor for more than a century.
Some of the debris was tough to identify until Nemo's arms lifted it from its sandy bed.
All right.
And we found the bell. Then we felt like beyond reasonable doubt this was in fact the Central America.
But where was the gold? The answer came less than a month after they found the ship.
Finally, after years of searching, Nemo struck it rich.
Good.
Gold, tons of it, pan more than 130 years ago from the shallow streams of California
and now sitting here at the bottom of the sea.
Incredible sight on the bottom of the gold.
It seems so unlikely in the midst of all of this chaos that is the shipwreck
that you have this pristine, wonderful gold glinting in your lights back up at you.
It's just, it's beautiful and awesome.
Beyond imagination.
Beyond description.
Gold bars, hundreds of them, littered the ocean floor.
A single bar ranging in size from five ounces to 63 pounds.
Gold coins, thousands of them, strewn all over the wreck.
Now the challenge was going to be to bring it back and bring it back in pristine condition.
Even a simple scratch would reduce the value of each coin by thousands of dollars.
The only way to succeed, pick up the gold one piece at a time.
Nemo's arms were able to lift each gold bar and place it in its own compartment in a tray.
And its suction cup was delicate enough to pick up each coin individually without damaging it.
For this tower of coins, stacked like poker chips, more than 300 in all,
Thompson developed this new technology.
Silicone poured over the treasure so Nemo can carry the gold without a scratch.
Later in the lab, the silicone was carefully chipped away.
And just to make sure not to leave any behind,
this sea vacuum collected sediment and gold dust off the ocean floor.
Back on land, Bob Evans has to pan it the old fashioned way.
And this is the way they did it during the gold run?
Evans has recovered more than 25 pounds of gold this way,
a loan more than $100,000 at current gold prices.
That's gold.
But it's only a tiny piece of an enormous American treasure,
recovered by Thompson one tray at a time.
How much gold did you find?
We've brought up so far about three tons.
And how much is that worth?
It's very difficult to tell what it's worth.
I think the credible estimates lie somewhere between $100 million and $400 million.
A mere $400 million?
A mere $400 million.
And gold wasn't the only treasure.
The shipwreck was rich with history as well.
For 130 years, it lay untouched, a time capsule buried by the hurricane of 1857.
There is no way to put a monetary value on that.
Author Gary Kinder's new book, Ship of Gold, details the sinking of the Central America,
and Thompson's search to find it.
The first trunk they pulled up was filled with clothes, dresses, there were shirts,
there were wedding presents in this trunk.
It really is a snapshot of the era.
It captures a moment in time, and it captures the era that at that time represented.
These are John DeMent's boots.
Bob Evans has catalogued thousands of artifacts.
Amazingly, the passengers' belongings were preserved by the ice-cold Atlantic.
It's a fabulous ring.
Jewelry, clothing, newspapers you can still read.
Even these cigars and this shaving kit survived.
There is still human hair on it.
There does, in fact, appear to be human hair on it.
And the expedition also had an impact on science.
Thompson says Nemo's cameras discover 12 new forms of sea life.
The shipwreck and the gold is a true American treasure.
And by the time Thompson brought it to shore, it seemed everyone wanted a piece.
Thirty-nine insurance companies sued him, saying the treasure was theirs
because they originally insured some of the gold in 1857.
If you're trying to shipwreck, it isn't finder's keepers.
After a seven-year legal battle going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,
Thompson's group was awarded 92 percent of the treasure.
The rest would be divided among some of the companies that originally insured the ship.
Despite the gold, Thompson insists he doesn't plan to change his lifestyle.
His passion, he says, is not money, but deep ocean exploration.
Why are you working so hard?
Because I love it. I love it.
And there may be even more hidden in the shipwreck.
According to author Gary Kinder, the Central America was carrying a secret Army shipment,
20 tons of gold, almost seven times what's already been recovered.
Tommy Thompson says he plans to go back to get the rest of it.