John Beal was a Vietnam veteran who returned to Seattle in the late 1960s carrying wounds that never fully healed. He was wounded three times during his tour, held captive in a bamboo tiger cage for thirteen days, and came home to a country that had turned against the war. He eventually settled in South Park, where money was tight, and the trauma of combat resurfaced as flashbacks and anger.
At the age of 29, Beal suffered a massive heart attack, followed by two more within seven months. According to KUOW, Seattle's primary NPR news radio station, his doctor told him he had roughly four months left to live and warned it would be a painful death, suggesting he take up a hobby to pass the time. Beal walked to a nearby stream to sit with that news, not realising it would become the turning point of his life.
