Growing up in southern California my parents allowed me to start keeping snakes in 1967 when I was 8 years old. My facination with them has never ceased and I have have successfully bred reptiles since 1972. As most herpers during that time, my snakes and lizards came from field collecting. I was blessed to have great parents that took me to the desert and mountains almost every weekend to "do my thing". They would just eat and picnik while I ran off for hours. My parents also took me to a wholesale business in Monrovia, Calif. called Western Zoological Supply. I hung around there a bit and met professional commercial collectors that constanly went from California to  Mexico,  Central and S. America and back to the U.S. I always made a point to be there when they arrived back from such trips to help pull out the new animals from their pillow case bags. At that time, they were my idols.

During the early 80's i lived in Hawaii for 5 years. Unfortunatly there were no snakes allowed on the islands. So I went to work at the Honolulu zoo's reptile dept under Sean McKeown. I had the opportunity to work with the worlds leading herpetolgist who specilaized torts and turles and especially phelsuma geckos. I really loved the opportunity to work with the most cutting edge reptiles and being involved with breeding so many species for the first time in captivity.

After moving back to the mainland in 1985 I met Lloyd and Sunny Lemke who I learned most of my snake husbandry from. My love for years was rosy boas and i extensivley collected different locales (and some of my own secret ones) along with people like Sterling Nelson, Brandon McGraw and Jerry Hartley.

In 1992 I moved from the west coast to the east coast and brought my  rosy boa collection with me. i soon discovered a new love ("when in Rome, do as the Romans" ) I relinqueshed my rosy collection and started on something closer to home. ...Florida kingsnakes!