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It didn’t take long for Sugar Ray Seales to produce the Olympic gold medal that put him — and Tacoma — on the map back in 1972.

As we walked down the wooden stairs at Shiloh Baptist Church on Hilltop, not far from the house on South 25th and G Street where he once lived, Seales pulled it from his front pocket, seeming to know instinctively that when he handed it to me, warm, heavy and worn from years of being shared, it would stop me in my tracks.

“That’s my American Express card,” Seales told me as he slowly unspooled the gold chain that holds the medal, perhaps not realizing that I already knew his next line — because he’s used it on just about every journalist that’s come his way since he won gold in Munich 50 years ago.

“I never leave home without it.”

It’s an unquestionably great quote from a legendary boxer who’s offered plenty of them over the years. But the thing is, Seales — 70 and legally blind, one of many lasting effects of the violent sport that made him famous — doesn’t have a home these days.

If you would like to help Sugar Ray Seales you can donate via his GoFundMe page.