I was born and raised in the beautiful Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas. We moved from Bishop out to Chalfant Valley when I was six years old. Chalfant Valley is about 13 miles northeast of Bishop sitting just below the White mountains. It is high desert (4300 ft.) with very little rainfall but lots of cool snake habitat. I caught my first snake (a Sidewinder) when I was six with a coat hanger and a one pound coffee can. Ever since then I have had the bug. I had a friend down the street that was wealthy and pretty much got anything he wanted. He always had cool pythons, boas, alligators, etc. that I would have never seen living way out here in the sticks. I started collecting all the local fauna and by the time I was 11 or 12. I had collected every reptile native to the Owens Valley. When I turned 16 and had a driver's license, I was out road cruising till wee hours of the night. Most my friends thought I was a bit loco but my true friends were out with me. In 1989, I was 18 and decided to go on a snake trip with two of my buddies. We drove down to Ridgecrest, CA, about three hours south of me and we caught Rosys, Lyres and all kinds of things we had never seen. Now remember all I had to go by in those days were old books. There was no internet, reptile magazines or snake shows. Well, at least I had never heard of a snake show until about 1993.

I wanted to produce my own snakes so I collected some nice looking Gopher snakes from around here and that was the first thing I ever bred. I hatched out 12 baby Gophers in '91 and by '95 or '96 I was hatching out over one thousand snakes every year. The best year I ever had was in '99, when I hatched just under two thousand snakes. It was so much work I decided to cut way back and now I have about 350-400 snakes opposed to around 600. I now hatch out about 700 snakes each year and it's pretty easy compared to the numbers a few years ago. I work with many color and pattern morphs along with many locale animals. I keep my bloodlines true and if something is of question you will see it presented that way.

I was married at 18 and divorced at 28. 

I have five daughters and from two relationships and I currently have a great, supportive girlfriend that will soon be my wife. She has two kids of her own (19 year old boy and 12 year old girl) and we may some day have one of our own. I will be taking all of them out into the sticks for some herping and my oldest one has already found a couple snakes on her own.