Chumlee escapes gnarly death, while missing all the diamonds in his mouth

Chumlee and I were catching up at an outdoor cafe on Friday when he told me he lost his $3,000 diamond-teeth upper grill. Have you seen it? It’s gotta be around here somewhere.

A diamond-teeth grill is a denture-esque slip on, similar to partials. The “Pawn Stars” star still has his lower grill, encrusted in real diamonds. He popped it out of his mouth to show me the bling.

But some time ago, his uninsured upper grill went missing.

“I lost a diamond earing in a cab before, too. You live and you learn,” he said.

I asked him why he doesn’t wear cubic zirconia grills, because I’m a cheapskate journalist.

“Nah. Can’t fake the funk,” he said.

Chumlee just returned to Las Vegas from four months of vacations in Hawaii, Los Angeles and Newport Beach. On Monday, “Pawn Stars” begins shooting 60 episodes. Yes, sixty.

“We can film them pretty fast now,” after six years of production, he said.

He will also DJ at the Palms hotel’s “Ditch Fridays” pool party on July 10.

Chumlee is the occasional target of Internet jokesters who post “#RIPChumlee” on Twitter and Instagram. This troll joke started after an April Fool’s prank a few years ago.

But Chumlee, 32, believes his life really was closing in on the end credits while vacationing in Hawaii this year. He got stuck in a swirling vortex or death waves. Here’s what he told me over iced Americano, through his half-diamond mouth.

Chumlee was thoroughly enjoying Hawaii, jumping off waterfalls, swinging from tree ropes into ponds, appreciating the beautiful ocean. Chumlee also snorkels.

“Some of my friends can go under for two and three minutes,” he said.

“I’m not anywhere close to that. I’m lucky to hold my breath 15 seconds. But it’s cool,” he said. “You can swim in these little caves real quick. Sometimes, you see sharks.”

One day, Chumlee leapt into the ocean side of a jump for the first time. Chumlee knew there was a nearby rock featuring a written warning about how many people have died there. But he wanted to try it. He jumped.

The water was calm, calm, calm. Suddenly, gnarly.

“The waves started coming over the rocks. You’re in this area that sucks you down and pulls you up, like, 15 to 20 feet at a time,” Chumlee said.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘Just stay calm. Just stay calm.’ Because I was already tired,” Chumlee said.

His local friends guided him to a 15-foot climb-to-escape rock.

“My friend came. He grabbed me. Pulled me up to the rock. He had to hold onto the rock and pull me in, because the current is sucking you down, up and down, up and down, up and down,” Chumlee said.

Exhausted after survival, Chumlee held no spite against the titan Pacific.

“If you respect the ocean and don’t turn your back on it, you can have a good time,” he said. “Never turn your back on the waves.”

So that’s the watery grave Chumlee escaped. As a younger man, he had a near-death during a desert-riding excursion when he and three friends overturned in a car that bounced off a rock and rolled three or four times.

“I had just put my seat belt on within 20 seconds before that. Not even a minute,” he said.

Chumlee doesn’t think about death much. I asked him what’s his favorite afterlife theory.

“I guess just be released into energy. Maybe be burned and put in the same urn as my dad,” he said.

“I have a little brother, hopefully he’ll outlive me. Maybe I’ll have some kids. I’ve got some nephews. I don’t know. Just to be remembered, I guess, by family and loved ones.”

“You don’t want to be the Great Chumlee in the sky?” I asked.

“No, no. I don’t want to be the Great Chumlee in the sky. I would rather be the great Chumlee in my family’s eye.”

He said that and smiled sweetly, sunshine twinkle-twinkling across the diamond-sparkly lower teeth of Chumlee, death-defier of water and sand.

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous.