The Max Chamberlin Memorial Fund

Max Chamberlin’s Assassination

Max was smart as a whip but had dyslexia and school was a terrible struggle from kindergarten on. So Max found a whole new way to use his considerable energy and gifts: from the age of six, Max began engaging in one business venture after another.

He made and sold custom pillows in the second grade. I still sleep on one. He began rebuilding and selling cell phones and broken Play Stations in the fourth grade, building up an amazing inventory of electronic parts and odd, specialized tools. He ran a snack shack for the Corbett sports teams for a couple years, buying the team’s gear with the profits. He mowed lawns up to a mile away. Every one of his businesses was astonishingly successful, but Max didn’t care much about money. Profit was just a different way to keep score in a game Max excelled at.

On his 18th birthday, Max went to work for AT&T servicing and selling cell phones in the Portland, Oregon area. He loved his job and was really, really good at it. His time with AT&T combined all his interests and aptitudes and engaged him in a way school never could. He quickly became one of the top salesmen in the West and one of the youngest store managers in the country. His store at Clackamas Town Center was the top store in Oregon and one of the best stores in the country. He worked 60 to 80 hours each week and cared deeply for his coworkers and fellow AT&T managers. The customer satisfaction scores in his store were off the scale. AT&T has just decided to name the company’s national customer satisfaction award, the most prestigious honor AT&T gives out, after Max!

Max attended the Metropolitan Learning Center in Portland from kindergarten through graduation. To our surprise, he chose to spend his junior year in Manta, Ecuador as an exchange student. Manta became his second home. He discovered a gift for Spanish and spoke fluent, almost unaccented Spanish. After that exchange student year, Max spent every vacation in Manta and brought all his earnings there to help his friends and family. His two great passions in life were cell phones and Manta, Ecuador. He wanted to live in Manta for the rest of his life, a wish that was granted too soon due to his brutal murder around midnight, Monday, November 2nd. He was 22 years old and in love, with everything to live for. He was sweet, kind and dearly loved by nearly all who knew him on two continents. He had no enemies.

In May, 2009, Max left AT&T to travel to Manta for an extended period to visit his girlfriend, Jaqui Silva, and to build a small apartment building he could live in and rent. Only Ecuadorian residents and citizens may hold title to property along the Pacific coastline, so the property was in the name of his host brother until Max could establish legal residency in Ecuador. The families of other close friends helped draw the building plans and handled wire transfers of Max’s money to pay for building construction. By late October, the shell of the building had been built and final improvements were underway for Max to move into the ground floor apartment. He spent each day at the worksite supervising construction, throwing himself into the project the same way he had thrown all his skills and energy into his work at AT&T. The building had the potential to become a lovely, graceful structure once the finish work was complete. He figured he would go back to work for AT&T this winter, returning to Ecuador as often as possible. He did not realize that the closer the building came to completion, the bigger a target he became.

Around 10: 50 p.m., Monday night, November 2nd, Max dropped his girlfriend and her two friends off at her house in Manta. It was a holiday weekend, Halloween and All Saint’s Day, and they had gone out for ice cream. He went back to his host family’s house, talked to Jaqui on the phone for around twenty minutes, changed into his casual clothes for bed and settled in for the night. Minutes later, someone he trusted called him with a request for help. The friend’s call may have been a deliberate trap to lure Max to a good place to execute him. Right after the call, without changing back into his dress clothes, he drove to a parking lot behind a local restaurant near downtown Manta, a place where young people go to drink at night.

A brief struggle ensued and Max was beaten. One or two shots were fired. One was a kill shot from short range to his head. He lay in a coma for some minutes, spread across the front seat of the car he had borrowed, on top of his cell phone. This wasn’t a robbery. His wallet was untouched.

The ambulance call came in a few minutes after midnight. Max died in the local hospital a few hours later, early in the morning of November 3rd.

No drugs, sex or crime on Max’s part was involved. He was assassinated while on the way to help out a friend. It was an act of bestiality.

Updates will be posted regularly as the local investigation continues and events unfold. Apprehending and bringing the perpetrators to justice is a very high priority for Manta, the State of Manabi, Ecuador and the United States. The local U.S. Consulate has been a Godsend!

We ask our friends and Max’s to consider donating to Worksystems, Inc., a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon in Max’s memory. The contribution will be tax deductible and will be used to provide internships for young people who struggle with school and have a keen interest and aptitude in communications, technology and business. AT&T has asked to contribute resources to the project in Max’s memory. The company will always consider Max to be part of their family.

Contributions can be made via Charitysmith.org.  You can donate by check or on-line.  Be sure to note on your check that the contribution is to go to the Max Chamberlin Memorial fund.  You can email Pat Malone at [email protected] for more information about the Max Chamberlin Internships or call or email Max’s father, John Chamberlin, at (503) 695 -3200, [email protected]. Worksystems will also be establishing a link on their website for the internships.

— The Chamberlin and Madnick Families and the Many Friends of Max Chamberlin

Fund Administrators

• John Chamberlin
• Pat Malone

Donations

CharitySmith accepts donations in two ways:

The above Memorial Fund is established as a division of Charitysmith Nonprofit Foundation (EIN 87-0636433). All donations are tax deductible in accordance with federal tax law. Receipts for tax purposes are sent via US Mail within two weeks of donation. Please consider asking if your employer participates in a gift-matching program. If so, your donation may be matched by your employer.

For questions regarding your donation or this memorial fund please contact CharitySmith.