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Gary Wright got into the computer business in the early 1980s.
Computers were different back then.
They weren't sleek and fast and seamlessly integrated into every aspect of our lives.
They were industrial, physical, constantly breaking like some old car or the outboard motor on a boat.
You needed to get under the hood.
So clients would pay three, five, six, $700 a month for you to come out and clean the computers.
Specifically, Gary would repair the hard drives, which had two main parts, a ceramic head and the disk below it, where the data was recorded.
If dust got caught between the head and the media, it would crash that ceramic head into this disk and start tearing off the oxide that was on top of these aluminum plates that were spinning at, like, 3600 rpms, and you'd lose all your data.
Gary got good at doing this kind of work.
He was a capable technician, and he's a really personable guy, a born salesman.
Talk with Gary a little bit and you want to buy something from him.
So it wasn't long before Gary decided to start his own company.
And pretty soon they had big contracts with the military, with the University of Utah and Salt Lake City, which is where Gary lived.
They got into retail and expanded to four locations, selling brand new Apple PCs.
If you were in Salt Lake City back then and you wanted a Macintosh plus or an Apple IIc, there was a good chance you were going to buy it from Gary.
Gary remembers feeling like it was all too good to be true.
The way his life was lining up.
One morning in February 1987, he's on his way to work on a beautiful blue sky day.
Sunroof's open, music's blaring.
You can imagine I'm a 20 something year old just enjoying life and drive back towards the office and pull into the parking lot.