Life got pretty strange for a while after my appearance of That’s Incredible!. It was the third most popular show on TV that season. So literally millions of people saw my appearance. People would come up to me while shopping or having dinner for an autograph. They honked at me as I walked down the street. It was my 15 minutes of fame.
For me, one of the oddest side-stories to come out of all this was associated with the unfortunate death of a co-worker. I didn’t know the man but we both worked at the world headquarters for semiconductor giant, National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC), the 4th largest semiconductor maker at the time. He was a design engineer. I was the off-shift plant superintendent, overseeing the company’s massive Santa Clara facility during swing and grave shifts. Headquarters was made up of 55 major buildings, spread over a two and a half square mile area, and over 5,000 employees during my shifts of responsibility.
This all happened over 30 years ago. So the following is the story to the best of my memory.
The company had an “open-door” policy, where anyone within the company could theoretically drop in and discuss whatever they wanted with whoever they wanted. Well, the engineer walked in and took a seat across the desk from Charlie Spork, Corporate President and my boss’s boss. He started telling him about corporate spies who had been approaching him while at bars, trying to steal company secrets. He believed the Soviets and Chinese were sending beautiful women to sexually tempt him but he had managed so far to avoid succumbing to temptation.
My boss was called into Spork’s office, reportedly to take part in the conversation. (My boss oversaw the company’s legal group, security, and negotiation.) But his real reason for being called in was to see if the man was sane and, if not, get him out of the President’s office and to someone who could help him. My boss quickly escorted him away and had him transported to the hospital for a mental evaluation.
The hospital staff quickly ascertained that he was psychotic and needed to be admitted. So, the NSC people turned him over to the hospital staff and left. While the hospital staff were busy and not watching close enough, the engineer left too. He walked across the street to Stan’s Diving Shop. He asked the clerk if he could see one of their spear guns. The clerk pulled it out of the display case and handed it to him. He promptly loaded a spear into it, then aimed it at the clerk. “Is this a Christian store?” he asked. The clerk didn’t know how to answer him. Someone called the police and they quickly arrived. One of the officers entered the store and tried to reason with the man. When the engineer aimed his spear gun at the officer, the officer shot and killed him.
The man’s family were very upset and felt he had been badly mishandled by the hospital (who let him walk away) and by the officer who shot him. They filed a lawsuit.
My boss attended the trial and told me the following story. He said that when they put the officer on the stand, the family’s attorney pushed him hard, wanting to prove he had not been justified in shooting the engineer, that non-lethal options had been available. My boss said that the officer’s response was “I’m not like that guy on That’s Incredible! who catches arrows. I felt it was him or me.”
As I said, it was a strange time. Thanks for following my humble ramblings.
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