I got into the real estate business up here about 30 or 35 years ago. I’d talk to real estate at Cabrillo College for a number of years. I had my own office in investment properties; I bought and sold for clients.

I had the benefit of being able to teach. I taught at Cabrillo College for maybe 25 years or so. I taught a variety of real estate courses.

I ran my office as a sole proprietorship. We got up to about ten or twelve employees at one time, then winnowed down over a number of years. I ended up with one employee, and I helped him get started in his own office and then I closed mine.

I started teaching at the college when it was only about ten years old. They were building a lot of buildings during that time.

I came out of Berkeley with a degree in social sciences, but I can’t really remember how I made the transition into real estate.

My real estate career was enjoyable. There were twelve of us at the peak employment, and we grew the company. There were a lot of rewards. The difficulty I had with it was that someone would come up in two star power and they wanted to buy into half the company and I just wasn’t prepared for that.

I had worked hard to build up the company and I wasn’t ready for someone to lay down $10,000.00 or whatever and buy into half the company and I just wasn’t ready for it. So people left and went someplace else or set up their own company. We declined in enrollment and influence on the street. Finally I just went to a one-man operation.

In 2000 I decided that I would start the new millennium by retiring and getting out of the business, and that’s what I did. I was ready.

In real estate I liked meeting people and being looked up to as a knowledgeable person. I enjoyed working with people who were trying to get their first home or their second home.

But when Rose Mary died, I closed up the five or six investment properties that we had. At the end of 1999 I had decided that I was going to start the new millennium without that burden to carry.