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neighborhood. He would first have to go to law school, but he knew eventually he was going to run for public office. “I can’t stand the sight of blood,” he once said. “So I couldn’t be a doctor.”
    Before his legal studies began, though, he wanted to make money to help pay the tuition. He continued to deliver pizzas for Abondanza on Wednesdays through Sundays and worked with Ascaridis doing construction work at Helene Curtis on the West Side. Among the perks there: an unlimited supply of free, fruity Suave shampoo.
    â€œThe stuff that smells like strawberries,” Blagojevich wistfully told the jury in federal court. “You can have strawberry and watermelon. Remember that in the ‘70s? Maybe you don’t.”
    Blagojevich loved his hair and enjoyed the perk, but he thought making connections in government probably helped his future plans more. He first got a job in the county recorder’s office through a high school friend. Later, Blagojevich worked for the county’s court interpreters program after his father found out about the job through a Serbian social organization hewas active in. The county was looking for a Serbo-Croatian interpreter, and Rade thought his bilingual son was perfect for it.
    One of his first cases, though, wasn’t interpreting a fellow Serb or even a Croat. Instead, he was translating for a Bulgarian defendant at a courthouse in the South Loop at Thirteenth and Michigan. Blagojevich liked to say that his language skills were the next best thing to Bulgarian. Well, not quite.
    During the testimony, two senior citizens said they were held up by a guy with a gun. But Blagojevich kept translating “gun” as “cannon.”

    Between all the jobs and getting ready for law school, Blagojevich took acting classes at the Goodman School, lessons he would use years later, as Reagan used his acting skills, at press conferences and on television commercials. Unfortunately, those classes wouldn’t help him on his law school entrance exam, the LSAT. As he had with nearly every standardized test he’d taken in his life, he did terribly, scoring in the lower half. He took it again and didn’t do much better. It didn’t matter. He still applied to several top-notch law schools, including Harvard. He thought it would be inspiring to learn law in Boston, a city so vital to the nation’s founding. It was clearly a long shot, Blagojevich would remember later in court. But he relied on his essay.
    â€œI tried to emphasize my background and diversity…. You can’t have a lot of people with a name like mine in Harvard,” Blagojevich testified. “It didn’t work. And I like to say I applied on a Monday and I got my letter of rejection back on a Tuesday. I’m not literally saying that, I’m under oath, but it came back pretty quick.”
    He also was denied by the University of Chicago and even Northwestern, a snub he took personally because it dredged up his feelings of inadequacy and lacking the proper pedigree.
    Blagojevich eventually got accepted to John Marshall Law School, a commuter law school in Chicago, and Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Having spent the last three years living at home, he liked the idea of going west, even if it meant leaving his parents, who were going to be footing most of the law school tuition bills. As a kid growing up, he had always envisioned that one sign of making it in life was getting to California.
    But before heading out, Blagojevich and Ascaridis took a trip to New York City. Beyond the expected tourist spots, Rod had one place he definitely wanted to go—Nixon’s townhouse on the Upper East Side.
    Blagojevich had read a magazine article that detailed Nixon’s daily routine, including when he took his walks around the neighborhood. Rod insisted they show up and try to catch Nixon outside. Although they showed up plenty early, they both were