Mario Vetanze sat in his office, trying to find the words to describe the legacy of his father, Nelson “Dr. V” Vetanze.

Hanging on the walls around him are the jerseys of several Broncos — Garett Bolles’ above his right shoulder, Justin Simmons’ above his left — each with a signature and personal note. The jerseys serve as a reminder of just a few of the many people Mario has helped thanks to the chiropractic empire his dad built.

“You can feel his presence, his energy,” Mario said. “It’s therapeutic to be in here.”

On this particular afternoon, it’s been 27 days since his father’s death Feb. 3 from metastatic bone cancer. But not a tear was shed during the nearly two-hour interview, instead it was mostly filled with laughs and smiles as he spent the time telling the stories of Vetanze’s 74 years of life, with the last 48 spent as a chiropractor in Denver where he worked on hundreds of Broncos players.

But Vetanze was not any ordinary chiropractor. His unorthodox methods and sometimes “magical” healing abilities, made him sort of an “urban legend” among the franchise. His list of Broncos patients is long, starting with running back Otis Armstrong in the 1970s and ending with safety Kareem Jackson this past season. And the stories are endless, from working on Walter Payton in a Chicago hotel to Jake Plummer nicknaming him the “chiroguru” to helping Simmons not miss a game the last three seasons.

In many ways, Vetanze was more than a local chiropractor. To his older patients, he was a brother. And to his younger patients, he was a father figure.

“He looked out for my best interest in a career where so many people look to take advantage of you,” Simmons said. “The conversations that we would have — personal conversations, life conversations, football conversations — it was just like I was talking to like a really good friend that I’ve known for so long. We would have real life conversations.

“It was really something I cherished and appreciated so much because you can tell when it’s genuine and when you matter to people, and Dr. V was someone that all his patients, that all his ‘family’ members, outside of his real family members, just mattered to him.”

Vetanze’s impact on the Broncos organization and in the Denver community is not an easy one to define — not for the players he helped, nor for his son who will attempt to follow in his footsteps.

But the life he lived was a simple one, and it centered around the advice he gave his son years ago.

“You don’t do this for money, you do this to help people because this is what you were put on this earth to do,” Vetanze would tell Mario. “You help people with no expectation of something in return. As long as you put the person first, your patient first, and you worry about getting them healthy, everything else will follow.”

And what followed was a legacy few in Denver will forget.

‘An urban legend’

Vetanze moved to Denver in 1973, after graduating from the National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Ill., where he studied to become a chiropractor. He opened a practice in Cherry Creek and not too long after, had his first Broncos client in Armstrong, who was then Denver’s star running back.

Armstrong had suffered a hamstring injury during the 1975 season and Vetanze promised he could get him back on the field, despite having little knowledge of Armstrong’s injury. Sure enough, Vetanze healed him and Armstrong returned to the field only days later.

“That’s kind of when he became an urban legend,” Mario said. “A few injured players were going to see this chiropractor before games and coming back healed on Sundays.”

Armstrong soon referred Rick Upchurch, a rookie at the time, to Vetanze and from there Vetanze’s list of patients grew. Upchurch and Vetanze became especially close, often traveling together as Upchurch introduced him to players around the league.

One year, Upchurch was invited to the NFLPA’s award ceremony in Chicago and brought Vetanze with him. It was there that Vetanze was introduced to Chicago running back Payton, as well as several other star NFL players, including Minnesota’s Ricky Young and Houston’s Robert Brazile. Vetanze ended up working on all of them in their hotel rooms for no charge.

“He walked in just like he knew them from Day 1,” Upchurch said. “He was looking up and down at their bodies, saying ‘you need to do this and that.’ And they looked at me like, ‘where’d you get this guy?’”

His client list quickly grew from there, working on players all around the league. So many Broncos players were seeing Vetanze that owner Pat Bowlen decided to hire him as the team’s chiropractor in 1998. That was short lived, though, after he returned to his own practice one year later, wanting to still work with everyday patients as well as professional athletes. By this point in his career, almost every player on the Broncos’ roster was seeing Vetanze, making the need to work for the team unnecessary.

His reputation among the players was held in high regard, with veteran players like safety Steve Atwater (1989-1999), receiver Rod Smith (1995-2006), quarterback Jake Plummer (2003-2006), safety Brian Dawkins (2009-2011) and cornerback Chris Harris Jr. (2011-2019), among others, encouraging rookies to see Vetanze, saying he added years to their careers.

“There were so many things that invited me to not just see him one time and led me to tell other people to go see Dr. V,” said Dawkins. “He was a gifted individual when it comes to allowing your body to speak to him. He’s not doing anything other than what your body is telling him to do. It’s hard for me to explain exactly what he did.

“It was unique, that’s the only way I know how to describe it. You could feel his energy when he put his hands on you. It was truly a healing experience every time.”

‘That’s when the true magic happened’

Dawkins is right — “unique” is probably the best word to characterize Vetanze’s methods.

Over the 50 years he was a chiropractor, he was constantly trying to find ways to treat his patients. He’d use electricity, magnets, new tables and all sorts of gadgets to help him work on patients.

“I can definitely say during my four years here, I recovered and functioned better because of him,” Plummer said. “When he put his hands on you, that’s when the true magic happened. He always had some crazy ass modality that he wanted to try out on you — a diabetic machine or massage water tables or a laser — he just gave so much of his heart and soul to you.”

Vetanze was considered an innovator in the chiropractic world. Plummer deemed him the “chiroguru” during his time in Denver, which became Vetanze’s nickname in YouTube videos he started making in 2011 to explain his techniques. And in 2016 he developed gravitational pattern alignment, which is now used around the world.

“His techniques were totally different than any other chiropractor I’ve ever been to,” Harris Jr. said. “A normal chiropractor would just put you on (the table) and then just push you down until it makes a little clicking noise. But Dr. V had different techniques to make sure your body was aligned from your toes, to your hips, to your back, to your neck. He could come to practice, watch me and tell me where I was out of alignment.”

Vetanze helped hundreds of players stay on the field. And ask almost any Bronco he’s worked on and they’ll likely credit him with making them better football players. Simmons, for example, says Vetanze is one of the biggest reasons he hasn’t missed a defensive snap the last three seasons.

But his treatment always went beyond the table. To him, it was the relationship with the person that meant the most.

“We were really and truly brothers,” Upchurch said. “Your words and the way you treat people mean something, and Nelson always treated people equally. He loved everybody.”

‘It was never about him’

Few of Vetanze’s patients knew he was sick, after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001 and when it returned in his bones 17 years later. He didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him, only telling his immediate family.

He continued to work as if nothing was wrong, wanting to keep his office full of positive energy.

“There was a feeling you had immediately when you walked through the door — like a friend you’ve had for years that you loved and cared about,” Plummer said. “They say healers like him, it’s tough because they give so much that they sometimes forget to save a little for themselves, but that was just him. He cared so much about everyone else. That was the most amazing thing about him, let alone his healing powers.”

Mario said they hope to have a celebration of life for Vetanze this summer, after only immediate family was able to attend his funeral because of the pandemic. He believes hundreds of players will show up, not just because of the healer he was, but because of the man he became.

“I know he’ll be remembered for a lot of the things he was able to do in terms of healing people, but just like a football player, he was more than a chiropractor, he was more than a healer. What I hope, and what my prayers are for, is that people will remember Dr. V. as that father figure, that brother figure, the person and the heart that he had for others.

“Hopefully that inspires all of us to go out into the world and have a little piece of Dr. V in us so that we can continue spreading what I think Dr. V has spread.”

People gravitated to Vetanze because his most effective method was the bonds he created. It wasn’t just about how he healed his patients physically, but how he earned their respect, as they fed off his constant positivity.

It’s the same attitude Mario hopes to help cultivate moving forward. Having worked alongside his dad his entire life, from working the front desk in high school to being hired by him as a licensed chiropractor for the last seven years, he’s confident he can fill the massive void his father left behind.

“When I first started working in the office with him and treating people, I did feel a pressure because they were huge shoes to fill,” Mario said. “But he was never a fan of pressure — he’d say you’re either going to do something or you’re not, so step up or step back. It was like the equivalent of him throwing me in the deep end and seeing if I sank or swam. And I’m his son, so I swam.”

Those who know and have been worked on by Mario say he’ll have no problem picking up where his dad left off. He’s been working with several Broncos players the last few years, becoming close with guys like Simmons, Bolles and Jackson, among many others.

“I think he’s going to crush it,” Simmons said. “If there’s anyone who knows and understands all of Dr. V’s techniques and methods, it’s Mario.”

And as for his dad’s legacy, well, the words are starting to become easier to find these days.

“It was never about him, it was about the people he served every single day. And that,” Mario said, “will be his legacy.”