RIVERSIDE, CALIF. >> Paul Sigmund had the world at his fingertips.
But heroin constantly brought him down.
Tragically, Sigmund, 53, died of what his family described as a “long illness” on Jan. 11 in Riverside, Calif.
The Riverside County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday that Sigmund was deceased. An office spokeswoman would not provide the cause and manner of death because the toxicology report was still pending.
Though the results are not definitive, Sigmund, a former chief of staff under Tony Mack’s administration, had a well-documented history with his struggles of heroin.
In September 2014, Sigmund was found in possession of heroin and hypodermic needles after crashing his car into a pole in Princeton.
In May 2011, Sigmund resigned from his chief-of-staff position after he was arrested and charged with heroin possession and assault on law enforcement. At that time, it was reported that officers saw Sigmund walking in the 200 block of Hanover Street and believed that he was loitering to purchase drugs. After Sigmund saw police, though, he attempted to dodge the officers and a struggle ensued after they caught up to him. Soon after that, Sigmund admitted that he was a “recovering drug addict who’s getting sober,” and said that he spent 22 days in a Connecticut rehab center. He later entered a pretrial intervention program, which is usually reserved for first-time offenders and provides defendants with alternatives to the traditional criminal justice process of ordinary prosecution.
The tangles with law enforcement were far cry from Sigmund’s start in politics.
In the 1990s, Sigmund served on the Mercer County freeholder board with Tony Mack, and Mack later selected Sigmund as his Chief of Staff after being elected mayor of Trenton.
His family was also respected in the community.
His late father who was a professor of politics at Princeton University, and his late mother, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, who served as Princeton Borough mayor, worked for President John F. Kennedy and founded the nonprofit organization Womanspace. Sigmund’s aunt, Cokie Roberts, is a successful national journalist, and his grandfather, Hale Boggs, served as a Louisiana congressman before grandmother Lindy Boggs replaced her husband in that position following his death.
In a promising start to his career, Sigmund graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science and then went on to earn a doctorate in banking, corporate, finance, and securities law from the University of Michigan Law School, according to his LinkedIn page.
Sigmund would land jobs as executive vice president and chief financial officer of corporations after college.
But after his short stint in Trenton, he admitted on his LinkedIn page that he was “on medical leave” for “fused spine/painkiller addiction treatment” for the past four years.
“The latter part of Paul’s life brought an illness that has and is taking the lives of so many and touching every family, proving again that addiction knows no barriers of race, income, ability, or deservedness,” his obituary reads. “It takes indiscriminately, and it took down this man who had so much to live for and so much to give.”
In stark contrast to his addiction, his family remembers Sigmund as a “vibrant, joyful person who lived, loved and connected to others fully.”
“Everyone who came in contact with Paul came out better for it,” his obituary states. “His generosity knew no bounds. He had limitless knowledge and charm (and charm enough to make others believe he held knowledge about a number of subjects in which he had little to none). And pushing others to join him in his pursuits brought out the best in them, producing travelers, surfers and new converts to the music, books and culture that he loved.”
To memorialize Sigmund, the family is asking for contributions to be made to Womanspace, Inc.,1530 Brunswick Avenue, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 (womanspace.org).
Trentonian staff writer Penny Ray contributed to this report
