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By the mid-1980s, however, Hazelwood's drinking problem had become so obvious that seamen on other Exxon ships knew of it. "Ever since I had known of Joe, I heard he had alcohol problems," says James Shiminski, an Exxon chief mate until 1986. "He had a reputation for partying, ashore and on the ship." In 1984, while off duty, Hazelwood was arrested for drunken driving in Huntington, and later convicted. Police say he was leaving a parking lot of a tavern where he had been attending a bachelor party for his brother Joshua, when his van smashed into a car. Hazelwood left the scene of the accident, only to be arrested by police in his own driveway.
Nine months later, he was confronted by his boss and close friend, Captain Mark Pierce, an Exxon supervisor in Baytown, Texas. He urged Hazelwood to seek treatment before he "got into trouble." In April 1985 he entered a 28-day alcohol rehabilitation program at a Long Island hospital. A doctor at the time found the skipper "depressed and demoralized."
But Hazelwood did not win his battle with the bottle. Not long after he left the hospital, he was reinstated as the skipper of the Yorktown, an oil tanker that ran along the East Coast. Friends say that being closer to home helped him dry out. He regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Huntington right up through 1988, but the sessions were often jammed with up to 90 alcoholics at a time. "The place was a social club," complains a former participant who remembers Hazelwood. "Only about ten or 15 people ever had a chance to talk." That seems to have suited Hazelwood, who had always been reticent about his feelings. Last year he and his wife Suzanne, whom he married in 1969 (they have one daughter), were on the verge of divorce. In September Hazelwood was again arrested and convicted for drunken driving, and his license was revoked.
The fact was that Hazelwood had resumed drinking heavily, but the return to old habits had somehow escaped Exxon's notice. In a letter to a Senate investigating committee, Exxon chairman L.G. Rawl stated that from the time Hazelwood returned to work after his rehabilitation, he "was the most closely scrutinized individual in the company." According to Exxon, in keeping with company policy designed to encourage employees with substance-abuse problems to volunteer for treatment, he was not penalized but closely monitored. Rawl claims that Exxon supervisors paid an average of two visits a month to Hazelwood for two years after his hospital stay, followed by regular observations after he was transferred to the Valdez in 1987.
Nobody has emerged, however, to claim that Hazelwood ever drank heavily aboard the Valdez; in fact, his management of the ship won the praise of superiors. Both in 1987 and 1988 the Valdez was singled out for a prestigious company award for "safety and performance." Nevertheless, he was increasingly disillusioned with his career, largely for reasons ranging from longer work hours and frozen pay levels to the growing powerlessness of captains to make their own judgments. A week before the oil spill, Hazelwood told a friend that he was thinking about taking a job as a harbor pilot on the Columbia River in Oregon.