Rick: a Primer

Born in Augsburg, Germany in 1972, I was the second son of a career army sergeant and German mother.

As was the peculiarity of growing up an army brat in the 1970s, I moved around the world with my family.

A great example of how unique the lifestyle could be was the fact that I completed my kindergarten year of school on no less than three continents.

After my father retired from the military we moved to central Florida.

My high school years were a blur of surfing and working for Walt Disney World Company selling ice cream and popcorn from outdoor carts.

Straight out of high school, I enlisted in the army in July of 1990 and would be sent into combat with the 101st Airborne Division a mere six months later.

I learned hard lessons about life, death and friendship while maintaining and flying with helicopters around the battlefields of Iraq.

Upon my return to the civilian world, I started taking college courses in psychology, history and anthropology.

In 1994 I returned to the Walt Disney World Company and moved back to Florida.

Three years later, I transferred from the Merchandise division at EPCOT to the security division.

For the next 12 months as a resort crime investigator, I had an intimate view of the darkest side of Disney World.

Following a case in which I remained undercover for over three weeks to apprehend a dangerous felon during an exhaustive manhunt, I began to rethink my career choices.

At a time in my life when I had little in the way of responsibilities, I decided to join a friend on a seven month hiatus trek around central Europe.

That trip, and the resulting photographs, would become the basis for my first published work, Snapshot Wanderings.

It was at this time that I met my wife Christy.

Although I had dabbled with writing now and again, it wasn’t until I became a columnist for the Themestream online magazine in 2000 that it occurred to me that I had any journalistic potential.

After Christy lived in Europe for a few years, we returned to U.S. and settled in western Washington.

It would take being diagnosed with Meniere’s disease to give me the final push to embrace being a full-time journalist.

In 2005, I was freelancing with a few weekly newspapers around Whatcom County and was soon offered a job as a general assignment reporter with the Whidbey News-Times.

I would continue as a newspaper reporter with multiple publications until 2011. That year I transitioned into film making and finished the manuscript for my second book, Nature Aware (2012, AKDP).

Several projects and many miles later I find myself at a crossroads again. I've completed a new book (due out this fall) and am putting final touches on a film about sea otters.

My passions recently took me to Tanzania for a month, where I completed research for a book I hope to work on next. I fill my time with writing, photography, and volunteerism. I believe in putting one's beliefs into action, and I truly aim to do good things on our fragile planet.

Mix in going deaf and the adversities of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I've got an unusually full plate in front of me.

That's a quick version of my answer to"how did you get to where you are today?"

In future blog posts I will likely tell a more detailed story of my past, present and future. I will leave you with this (an excerpt from my writings):

We scooped up what we could. Some of the bodies had nearly fused together from the immense heat of the fire which engulfed the aircraft after it crashed.

Truth be told, we almost certainly did not recover seven sets of remains but were able to fill six body bags.

It took us over 25 minutes to ferry the black vulcanized human-sized bags back to our aircraft.

In our haste, we had piled the last two bags on top of each other near the doorway where my machine gun was positioned.

Out of necessity and fatigue, I flew the half-hour flight to the brigade graves registration point partially perched atop the bags.

In a journal I kept during the war, I captured the moment this way:

“(The) flight home is quiet and endless, I’m sitting on (body) bags, on my throne.”

When we returned to our base camp, we cleaned off the helicopter’s deck as best we could and then worked on minor mechanical issues until the wee hours of the morning.

I would only catch four hours of quasi-sleep before being roused for our next mission.

During, subsequent missions, I would be shot at and return fire several times, sometimes with deadly effect.

I wish I could say I acted and reacted out of bravery or even self-preservation, but honestly, I followed orders and did as I had been trained.

It has taken me years to reconcile who I am with what I did during the war.

When I returned home following the Gulf War, I was still 18 years old, barely more than a child.

But never again will I have the luxury of innocence.