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RICHLAND -- After 14 steady seasons as a professional football player, Richland's Kimo von Oelhoffen has seen a number of changes in his life over the last year.
First, there was the injury to his right knee that forced the 38-year-old to retire at the end of Philadelphia Eagles training camp in 2008.
Next month, he'll auction off most of the heavy construction equipment his company, Vono Construction, owns, and then he'll move into commercial building development.
He just finished his first minicamp as a minority intern coach for the Cleveland Browns.
His ultimate goal, though, is to settle into a routine where he concentrates on his family -- wife Tondi and their three daughters, ages 6, 10 and 15.
Von Oelhoffen never played high school football while growing up in Hawaii, but he did turn out at the University of Hawaii before transferring to Walla Walla Community College, then to Boise State.
He was drafted in 1994 by the Cincinnati Bengals and played six seasons for them as a defensive tackle. He spent six more seasons playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, helping lead them to a Super Bowl championship in 2006. He played one season with the New York Jets and one more with the Eagles.
"I didn't expect to play this long," he admitted. "I just got lucky. Over the career, the body is a funny thing. You could play for three years and your body will just hurt. Then the next year, you feel great. It all comes down to work ethic. I retired because of one issue, and that was my knee."
He says if he could be remembered for anything about his playing career, it's this: "I won't be outworked. I had great technique and strength."
Von Oelhoffen played in 35 percent of the Eagles' plays for coach Andy Reid in 2007, and Reid asked von Oelhoffen to come back in 2008.
"I was in training camp for 2 1/2 weeks when I tore the cartilage in the knee," he said. "I stayed three weeks rehabbing it. But it gets harder as you get older. Then a couple defensive linemen went down. Andy needed to make some moves. It gave me time to go home and get it right."
It never did.
"That knee is gonna have to be replaced," von Oelhoffen said. "I can't wait to fix it and then I'll be on the basketball court. Everything else is fine. I lost a lot of weight, about 25 pounds. My body went through a 60-day shock. It was used to the stress. The harder you push your body, the harder it responds to stress. I never went two days without working out. When I just stopped, it hurt for a while. Then the body adjusts."
So despite the bad knee, von Oelhoffen left the game with his health relatively intact and a lot of good memories.
"I'm gonna miss the guys," he said. "The locker room atmosphere, there's nothing like it. Emotions are flying, there's trash talking, and you can't wait to launch into somebody."
His career highlight? The Super Bowl victory over the Seahawks, "but it was more the journey with the coaching staff and the players. Seeing the coaches and players coming together, going through adversity at the time. We had a core of 16 starters for six years, which is tough to do. We went to a number of AFC Championships together. That year we won the Super Bowl, that experience we had before helped get us there."
The toughest thing to see?
"Seeing people after they leave," he said. "Guys trying to get in their two to four years and they get cut. Sometimes it's just a toss of the coin. Us as players, it's tough to understand why one player gets released and another doesn't. It can come down to roster spots, depth or youth. You may not get an opportunity, especially when you're going up against All-Pro guys."
He said the two toughest offensive linemen he went up against were Hall of Famer Bruce Matthews and Steelers center Dermontti Dawson -- against whom von Oelhoffen had twice-yearly battles with while playing with the Bengals.
"Dawson, when I was a rookie, snapped the ball on one play, cut me off and threw me down, got up and cut the linebacker down, and Jerome Bettis gained 15 yards," he said. "Then he helped me up and said 'Good job Kimo, but you've gotta use your hands more.' I learned to study those guys."
While playing, von Oelhoffen always kept his eye on the future, planning for the day he would be done in the NFL.
"I learned a lot of good lessons and a lot of bad lessons," he explained, watching what other players did with their finances. He bought real estate, and he started the construction company seven years ago.
"I was originally in real estate development, but I love construction," he said. "It has a lot of characteristics that football does: team building, it's challenging. It's satisfying."
But with the recession, construction is not as robust as it has been. He's finishing up a couple of projects on Keene and Leslie roads in Richland, and trying to finish an assisted living facility project in Richmond, Ky., a community he lived in while playing for Cincinnati.
Meanwhile, he's downsizing his construction equipment inventory. Eltopia's Booker Auction Company will auction it off at 10 a.m. July 9 on the company property at 1115 S. Clodfelter Road in Kennewick.
From there, he says he'll still do some smaller construction projects.
"Then, I want to focus on my family," he said.
But he still has his obligations to the Browns for the rest of the summer.
"Eric Mangini invited me to be a coach," he said. "He wanted me for the whole season. My wife thought I should take it, but let's see how this goes first. Then maybe next year ... I'll probably fall in love with it."
Mangini hopes so. He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "(Kimo) did the bulk of his work with the Steelers and then he came over to the Jets. We picked him up as a free agent. I got to know Kimo really well during that process. I think he is an incredible pro."
As Mangini knows, no one will work any harder.
"I don't really have any regrets," said von Oelhoffen. "I wish I'd paid attention to the game earlier in my career. But if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it the same. I've been lucky."
* Jeff Morrow: 509-582-1507; jmorrow@tricityherald.com
