AVENGERS INSIDE LOOK: SURVIVING THE SCARS AVENGERS' HALL WANTS TO SERVE.

Byline: Rich Hammond  Staff Writer

Most of Victor Hall's teammates and coaches haven't known him long enough to learn about his past, even if they wonder about the scars that streak the left side of his face.

``Since I've been out here, I see people looking at me and I can read their minds,'' Hall said. ``They want to say, `Were you burned?' I understand why they are curious.''

Hall, one of the top two-way players on the Avengers and a seven-year veteran of the Arena Football League, prefers to be seen for what he is on the field: a superbly conditioned, 6-foot-4, 265-pound lineman who attacks an opposing quarterback with the same skill he defends his own quarterback.

``He's an offensive lineman with a defensive lineman's attitude,'' Avengers coach Stan Brock said, ``and the players really feed off his positive approach to the game.''

Hall's skill and confidence betray the fact that his existence was once fragile. The scars on his face came not from a fire but an auto accident that impacts his life 14 years later.

At the time, Hall was a 17-year-old football star in the small Alabama town of Anniston, playing running back and linebacker and drawing national attention from Division I programs. ``Untouchable'' is the word Hall uses to describe himself at the time, but in the early morning hours of March 11, 1986, that feeling of invincibility vanished.

``I was driving home from my girlfriend's house and I feel asleep at the wheel,'' Hall said. ``When I woke up, I hit the brakes, I went into a skid and I was heading straight for a ravine. The car flipped seven times, and while it was flipping, the glass from the back window was cutting me all over.

``When they got me to the hospital, I asked to see a mirror. To this day, I still have an image of what I looked like. I could see the outside of my teeth, because the whole side of my face was just torn wide open. My first words were, `Oh my God, what have I done to myself?' ''

Hall suffered no internal bleeding but required immediate surgery to reattach his left ear and close more than 1,000 cuts on his face and chest. The surgery lasted 11 1/2 hours, and at one point, Hall's heart stopped.

``It was like I was looking into a pure sky, all white, and I encountered some type of figure and a voice,'' Hall said. ``The voice said, `It's not your time.' ''

A second surgery, to repair Hall's cracked sternum, lasted 14 1/2 hours, and once again, he clinically died on the operating table.

``I heard a voice again,'' Hall said, ``and this time it said I had a purpose in life and I wouldn't die until I found out what that purpose was. Now I was only 17, and at 17 I didn't know exactly how I was supposed to figure out what my purpose was.''

Of more immediate concern to Hall was his recovery. He was a candidate for plastic surgery, but in order to first flatten out the scars, he had to endure weekly sessions in which he received more than 100 shots of cortisone in the face and chest.

``You can't deaden the face, you can't numb it,'' Hall said. ``It got to the point where I would cry when the needles went in. I could feel every needle and it was a tremendous amount of pain. I did that for a month, then I told the doctor I couldn't take it anymore. I decided I would accept whatever cards had been dealt to me.''

That left Hall with the insecurity of being a teen-ager and facing his peers with a body full of scars, with a head that was swollen.

``The aftermath was the most devastating part,'' Hall said. ``If people didn't know me, they would stare, like I was a bad person. I had to wear cream on my face when I went to school. Friends, when they got mad at me, the first word out of their mouths was `Scarface.' ''

Hall persevered, got back up to 210 pounds after a low of 145, and the support from colleges didn't waver much. Hall chose Auburn over Alabama. In his first practice at Auburn, Hall separated his shoulder. The next year, he tore ligaments in his ankle in a game against Ohio State.

``At that point, I was wondering whether I was meant to play sports,'' he said.

Hall eventually became a starting tight end, and after short stints in training camp with the Minnesota Vikings and Indianapolis Colts, he left football in 1991 to join the police department in Hobson, Ala., and within three months he had become the youngest police chief in state history.

In a roundabout way, Hall believes he had begun to recognize his purpose in life, and it centered around service. Hall joined the Arena League's Orlando Predators in 1994 (he also played for the Barcelona Dragons of NFL Europe that year), and joined a program in Florida designed to promote reading in elementary schools.

Hall also worked as a truant officer in Florida's Orange County, speaks to students about his experiences and for the past two years he has used his own money to buy Christmas trees and gifts for local needy families in the Orlando area.

``I've been around a lot of kids who don't have family support and I'm trying to break that trend,'' Hall said. ``I'm trying to break that trend.''

Hall, acquired by the Avengers in a trade earlier this year, is anxious to become involved in some type of Los Angeles service organization and begin a motivational-speaking career. He politely declines to have any of his family or friends in Alabama discuss his accident and recovery but doesn't shy away from the impact that period had on his life.

``I guess it all really does go back to the accident and realizing how fortunate I really am,'' Hall said. ``To have somebody you helped come back and say, `Hey, Mr. Hall, thanks for taking the time to help us learn,' that feels great.''

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Photo: Avengers two-way lineman Victor Hall survived a horrible automobile accident and came back to play for Auburn and in the pros.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer