Chester (Chet) L. Richards retired aerospace engineer, and inventor (19 patents), recently turned 80. Having had a number of odd brushes with death, Chet has always boldly gone where few have dared. His mantra: view all that comes your way — the good, the bad and the ugly — as a series of adventures.
That attitude took shape early. After narrowly escaping serious injury from The Potato as a lad, a few years later, in college, Chet and friend Judy Burns co-authored a spec script for “Star Trek” on a lark. The story, “The Tholian Web,” became one of the series’ most popular episodes. A veteran screenwriter advised the young man, “You should write….Write your passions.” But I have nothing to say, Chet thought. That was the moment he decided the real message was to fill his life with adventures. And he did — adventures in surfing, learning and performing music, travel to exotic places for river rafting, and his work as a rocket scientist. Along the way, he’s always met fascinating characters. He did write — essays (over 50 have been published so far). But it was the loss of Sarah, the love of his life, that caused Chet to write his first book of stories. At the house in Thousand Oaks they once shared, the hair-raising adventures Sarah loved continue to occur, though as the author says, he no longer has much hair.
