21 Facts About Sunny Garcia

Sunny Garcia's top surfing achievement was becoming the ASP WCT World Champion in 2000.

Sunny Garcia initially retired in 2005 but returned to competition.

Sunny Garcia has served prison time for tax evasion and was arrested for fighting.

Sunny Garcia was a dominant force in the Hawaiian Surfing Association starting as a 17-year-old on the 1986 WCT, beating former champion Tom Carroll and threatening to cause an upset to the top 16.

Sunny Garcia showed great consistency throughout the 1990s, finishing in the top ten every year and coming third four times.

In 2000,14 years after his debut, Sunny Garcia achieved the ultimate surfing accolade, emphatically dominating the ASP WCT from the start of the campaign, winning the first two events in Australia and clinching the title in Brazil, the penultimate event.

Sunny Garcia was determined to win the series, and many people tipped him to do so but in the end early elimination in the O'Neill World Cup of Surfing, in his own backyard, meant he was denied a place on the 2009 Dream Tour.

Sunny Garcia has a clothing deal with Affliction Clothing where the tattoos he has on his body have been replicated on his own custom shirt.

Sunny Garcia has volunteered for the charity Surfers Healing, a foundation for autism, which has included beach clean-up days held in Hawaii and along California's coast.

In 2011, Sunny Garcia was the host of the Surfers for Cystic Fibrosis golf tournament fundraiser that has been organized by the charitable organization The Mauli Ola Foundation.

Sunny Garcia was born Vincent Sennen Sunny Garcia on January 14,1970, in Ma'ili, on the Westside of Oahu, Hawaii.

Sunny Garcia is of Puerto Rican and Hawaiian heritage from his father's side and Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Irish, and Native American heritage from his mother's side.

Sunny Garcia has been married three times, most recently to Colleen McCullough in 2008, and has three teenage children from his first marriage.

In October 2006, Sunny Garcia was sentenced to federal prison for tax fraud after failing to pay taxes on unreported contest winnings from 1996 to 2001.

Sunny Garcia failed to report over $471,000 in prize money on his tax returns for those years, resulting in a three-month sentence, beginning January 12,2007, plus a further 7 months of house arrest and 80 hours community service with Goodwill.

Witnesses allege Sunny Garcia went after the cameraman, knocking him to the ground and inflicting deep grazes to his back and arms with one of the man's hands receiving injuries.

Sunny Garcia could go to jail and then people would want to get me.

Sunny Garcia sought legal advice from high-profile Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst.

On September 17,2019, Garcia's daughter, Kaila, reported that Sunny had previously been in a coma, but was speaking again and doing physical, speech and occupational therapy.

Since December 2014, Sunny Garcia had been open about his struggles with depression and mental health, and encouraged those who deal with mental illness to talk about their feelings with others.

In 2010, Sunny Garcia was inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame at Huntington Beach.