Editor’s note: Juli Goetz Morser and Janie Starr are writing this series to put a face on the growing number of Islanders barely getting by — friends and neighbors who are living on the verge of losing their homes, getting laid off, going hungry, becoming homeless. Many, however, have also been helped by such community organizations as the Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness (IFCH), Vashon Youth & Family Services (VYFS), Vashon HouseHold (VHH) and the Vashon-Maury Community Food Bank — and as a result are now on the verge of buying a home, getting a job, going back to school. These stories represent our Island. Starr and Morser are honored to share them.

Like any good entrepreneur, Islander Richard Lipshay understands the necessity for seed money to fund a new business venture or bankroll an innovative idea. 

Over the span of his wide-ranging career, Richard has started his own companies and invested in others. He grew up in a Republican family, the son of activist parents who co-chaired Barry Goldwater’s re-election campaign in Orange County. One of his earliest memories is being bounced on the knee of the candidate himself. Indeed, Richard is steeped in the values of achieving the American Dream. He believes in working hard and taking personal responsibility. He doesn’t cotton to the notion of a nanny state. 

But about five years ago, he faced a tough decision: receive financial assistance from social services or be homeless. Reality won out over ideology and Richard accepted the help — as seed money for his life. But, he said, it stuck in his craw.

Richard never imagined he would one day be “living on the verge.” In Richard’s own words, he has generally done quite well. In his teens, he attended the Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont as a member of the U.S. Ski Team. Ranking 50th in the world is no small feat, but as Richard points out, it doesn’t lead to much of a career. So Richard left the ski team and joined the military in 1981. In 1985, fresh out of the service, Richard made his first visit to Vashon, marching in the Strawberry Festival parade and investing in Islander Tom Craven’s fledgling company, Olympic Roller Skateboard.

For the next 21 years, Richard started companies or found jobs in a variety of fields. He worked as a rancher on his family’s farm in Northern Idaho, on ships as a machinist and as a Mac specialist for Zones.com. He earned his degree in aviation technology, started a successful trucking company in Salt Lake City and then founded a commercial photography studio in Seattle, serving clients like TreeTop, Henry Weinhard’s and Oberto for 10 years, until the hustle and overhead became unmanageable.

That was about the time — 2006 — when Islander Henry Sauer brought Richard and his partner Laurie Lumpkin to the Island to work construction on Sauer’s spec houses. When construction ended, Richard and Laurie met Betsy Sestrap, who offered them a place to stay on her Wax Orchard farm.

“It just snowballed from there,” says Richard. “Mark Friars, a man with enormous heart, and Jessie Multinado, an exuberant vibrant guy, showed Laurie and me the ropes, how to get work here. If you do good work, it speaks for itself and goes out from there.” 

But even if your work talks and you are articulate, that does not always make ends meet, as Richard and Laurie soon learned. But to their good fortune, what they also soon discovered was a network of Island social services dedicated to helping the homeless and working poor. 

“I first heard about Nancy Vanderpool and the Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness when a bill came due that I couldn’t take care of in time. Nancy Vanderpool and IFCH have helped immensely in a number of ways, ranging the gamut of issues that affect some of us who currently find ourselves on the lower rung of the economic ladder.  There was a time, for instance, when I had work pending that couldn’t safely be done without first having a brake job completed on my truck.” IFCH was there to help.

So, too, were the food bank and Vashon HouseHold. Barbara Brown of VHH contacted Richard’s partner Laurie about an apartment in JG Commons. “Getting the apartment took the pressure off to the degree that we could start to look to the future. … It allowed me to get my business license and bank account set up and begin to build a clientele base” for his latest venture, Vashon Home Services. 

Richard is clear that while he would have ended up on the street without these benefits, he really sees them as a “springboard” to the next thing. He adamantly states that people should use these social services as a hand up, not a hand out. 

“What organizations like IFCH and VHH provide are the means and way to a future that empowers a person to hold their head up, to succeed and to continue to aspire to the American dream, at a time in our country when that isn’t such an easy thing to do,” he said. Kind of like seed money for life.

Richard hopes that IFCH and VHH can be models for other communities but wonders if Vashon is an anomaly. “I’d like to think it’s not. But I realize that the people and organizations of Vashon are special and rare commodities, which should be both highlighted and celebrated as examples of what can be done when a community pulls together.”

— Juli Goetz Morser is a freelance writer on Vashon.