The Right Staff

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The company survived, but Tuck grew increasingly despondent over the business. "I was getting burned out, working with experienced recruiters who were like salespeople," he says. "This was like a business. I wasn't having fun." So in 1985 he hired a manager and took off to Europe for four weeks. Upon his return, he started working out of the house and was soon billing more than everyone else combined. So he let the manager go, and the staff gradually trickled away. With just two support people left, Tuck moved the company to El Cerrito, down the hill from his home.

But by 1993 Tuck still wasn't happy--and his personal obligations were mounting. In April, overwhelmed by debt, he found himself filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy--an act he regrets and even now has difficulty explaining. "I was really shaken up," he says. He became depressed and went into therapy. During those sessions he finally realized what made him happy--not only in his work but also in what he wanted out of life. One morning, looking out his living-room window, he saw the entire bay and lowlands covered in clouds. But in his inner world, the clouds parted. "All of a sudden, everything became clear," he says. "Who I was, what I had to do, why I was here."

Knowing himself that much better, he resolved to build a company in which the culture made sense to him. Then he began to fill it with like-minded people.

After my last day of interviews, Tuck invited me up to the house for dinner. Sauer prepared an Asian stir-fry. Once dinner was out of the way, Tuck offered me a tour of the house. Finally. Wait till you see it, everyone had said, referring to the "fun house." Hundreds of visitors take the tour every year.

We entered a room devoted to Hollywood, lined with a wall of film books and filled with movie posters. A second room was dedicated to Broadway plays. Then we headed to the basement, which is crowded with pictures and objects. An entire wall was lined with painted-plaster characters from Charles Dickens novels, and a bathroom was plastered wall to wall with postcards of roller coasters, including a small mechanical replica on a counter. Beyond, there was a room with four pinball machines fixed so that the player usually wins. We continued touring the basement, but there was so much covering the walls and ceilings, I couldn't take it all in. There was the screening room and, behind that, a stage for presenting magic shows. In a small, darkened anteroom, two large chairs faced a three-level display--a faithful replica of a Victorian English village, painstakingly created with miniature houses, each one lit from the inside.

In a far wing of the house, we entered a bedroom, which was also overflowing with objects. A miniature Christmas display contained several trees and fiber-optic strands that resembled fireworks when they lit up. Beyond a sliding glass door was a wooden deck, overlooking a garden below, with San Francisco in the distance. On the other side of the bedroom was another picture window looking into darkness. With the faint sound of a foghorn in the background, the window slowly brightened to reveal an entire New England village, with miniature lobster boats, docks, houses, shops, a church, and a market.

A friend of Tuck's who suffers from AIDS planned to die in this room. The Christmas scene, the New England village, the view of San Francisco--all are images the man told Tuck he wanted to see from his deathbed. Tuck first met him when a group of AIDS patients toured the house, and the man was intrigued enough to come back and help Tuck conduct tours. After a hospitalization, he asked Tuck if he might move in to recuperate. Tuck and Sauer talked it over and agreed. In the months that followed, their newfound friend designed his own room and created the wildly elaborate displays. Now, with his health returning, he hardly talks about dying anymore.

With some help from Tuck, he even has a job, which would hardly have seemed possible when Tuck first met him a couple of years ago. Back then, the friend had to be coaxed to do anything. Finally fed up, Tuck asked him if he was going to die soon. The man admitted he wasn't. "So why are you dying now?" Tuck pleaded. "All of us are going to die. Why not live to the fullest until you die?"

Samuel Fromartz is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

Screen tests

There may be no surefire method for hiring the right people, but--as these Inc. 500 CEOs will attest--it helps to know what you're looking for

By Ilan Mochari

Sure, Richard Tuck's hiring methods may be unorthodox, but there's no question about one thing: the CEO of Lander International knows what he's looking for in a potential hire. Herewith, some other Inc. 500 CEOs who screen candidates for very specific traits:

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