After being honorably discharged from the US Army at Fort Ord in 1963 I refused to return to my home town in Culver City California. While stationed at Fort Ord I had fallen in love with the Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur. After five years of college, a stint as an associate editor of a southern California weekly newspaper and service to my country I took a job as a construction company dispatcher on the Monterey Peninsula to be able to stay in this area. I lived in a cabin behind the Carmelite Monastery at Point Lobos for seven years then was able to move into the Carmel Valley. I worked for Granite Construction Company for 30 years and retired in 1993 as manager of their Monterey County Branch.

As a result of my extensive construction experience in all areas of Monterey County I gained a heightened sense of neighborhood. I know all the back roads, the soil conditions and demographics and have watched neighborhoods go through periods of growth, stagnation, decline, and renewal.

In my retirement I focused on making a documentary film “Monterey Memories” which became (and still is) the most popular and best selling souvenir visitor information video and DVD ever produced on the central California coast. It is updated periodically and available for sale at such places as the Lake El Estero Visitor Center, Carmel Drug Store, Rocky Point Inn, Big Sur River Inn, Nepenthe Gift Shop, The Aquarium, various shops in Cannery Row and on Fishermans Wharf.

I mention this documentary DVD for two legitimate reasons. First of all, it demonstrates that as a 48 year resident of Carmel and Carmel Valley, I’m still very much enthused and grateful to be able to live here on the central coast. Secondly it serves to demonstrate the width and depth of my personal firsthand knowledge concerning the economic forces driving our county.

In my dealings with virtually every city and county agency involved in land planning, taxation, construction development and the building permit process, I’ve learned how to extract the public information I need to formulate substantiated opinions of current property values.

Although not born in Monterey County I permanently adopted this area as my home and I have raised seven wonderful children in it.

In 2003 I returned to college to learn how to determine the value of real estate properties. My instructor Chris Daniel asked me if I’d like to work for him in his appraisal business. I worked for Chris as an employee until the summer of 2006 when I became an independent contractor.

Chris is an extremely good but demanding teacher of real estate appraisal at Monterey Peninsula College. He is currently one the judges sitting on the county panel hearing and settling property tax disputes between the county appraiser and property owners. He has over 25 years of appraisal experience, is a past director of the Sierra Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, holds a prestigious SRA designation and has developed a reputation as being one of the most thorough, astute, knowledgable and constantly accurate appraisers in the tri-county area. I mention these facts because Chris has been my teacher, my mentor and my advisor for well over six years. I have learned and continue to learn a very great deal from Chris.