What does he do in his spare time?

In Richard DeMarco's spare time, he has bought land on the tropical Hawaiian island of Kauai. With his wife and four children, he planted 200 Macadamia nut trees. Together, they are also constructing a processing shed from scratch. Since it will be six more years until the trees start producing nuts, the shed is currently housing their Volkswagen van and camping gear.

What is really important to him?

"Be independent." Richard confidently recommends that one get the broadest education possible while one is young. He finds that, as he plants his Macadamia nut trees and builds his own processing shed, he draws not only from a background in physics but also from his education in painting. He suggests that getting the broadest education possible gives one the independence to do any job oneself.

What is something else cool that he has done?

When Richard first moved to the West Coast in 1974, he bought an old Victorian house built in 1893. Since then he has been rebuilding and modernizing the house literally from the ground up. Over the past eighteen years, he has given this house more than just a face life. Doing the equivalent of liposuction, plastic and reconstructive surgery, he has personalized his home for his family while still maintaining its original, elegant Victorian air.

How did he get here?

Richard was born a New Yorker but grew up in Connecticut, where his father was an office worker with the New Haven Railroad. Graduating from his public high school as an avid soccer player, he attended Bowdoin College and graduated with an AB in physics. Inspired by Leonardo daVinci, James Fenimore Cooper, and Frank Lloyd Wright, he went on to earn a BFA in painting at Boston University. When he was thirty-two, he crossed the country to live in Berkeley, California. Four years later, he started working at the Berkeley Lab. Beginning his career as an accelerator technician at the old cyclotron (which was used to accelerate particles), he later found himself working inside the same dome as it was transformed into the ALS in 1989.