I was sitting at home, in that cramped little house on Oetkin Rd, Milwaukie
Oregon, watching my life stall out in real time. My resume was out there, floating in the void, and I was waiting for a call that wasn’t coming fast enough to cover the mortgage. The air in the house had grown thick with tension, the kind that settled into the walls, into the furniture, into the space between my wife and me. We weren’t going to make it. I had known that since my middle child was born, but now it was obvious. The disdain in her eyes, the way every word felt like a landmine waiting to go off. There was nothing left between us but obligation and silence.
And yet, my phone kept ringing.
Not for interviews, not for job offers. No, it was my old boss, Jim Anderson, calling me like I was still on his payroll. His tone sharp, demanding, like I owed him something.
“What’s Valstar?”
“How does the docking mechanism work?”
“Where’s this file?”
“Where’s that document?”
And me, the nice, obedient guy, still answered. I gave him the details, told him exactly what he needed to know, and every time we hung up, there wasn’t even a thanks. Just another call waiting to happen.
Meanwhile, I was drowning. I had walked away from my job on emotion, something I didn’t usually do. But everything had become unbearable—work, home, the mounting bills, the sheer weight of knowing that I had built this life, this illusion of stability, and it had all come crashing down. I was still going to church, still putting in 30 hours a week as part of the bishopric, still trying to hold onto something that resembled purpose, but it wasn’t enough.
Then, one night, the phone rang.
A voice on the other end. Straight to the point. No bullshit.
“Hey, Jaime. It’s Brian Bush. Lucent Technologies. Remember that Advantest 5171 P tester? That bottom-loading mechanism you were designing? Think you can still put that together?”
I sat up straighter.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t work for Tokyo Seimitsu anymore.”
“I know. Doesn’t matter. Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Send me a design.”
It was that simple. No drawn-out conversations, no ass-kissing, no mindless meetings. Just a problem and a solution.
I put the design together, sent it over through my AOL account—dial-up modem screeching like some kind of tortured digital banshee—and waited. When Brian responded, his reply was just as direct.
“Send me a quote.”
I barely thought about it. I had always done the quoting, the pricing, the calculations—it was second nature. I threw a number out there, formalized it under some bullshit company name I had been sitting on, and before I knew it, I was on a conference call with Brian and a guy named Phil Sizemore, someone I had met back in San Diego.
Talking to them felt like coming up for air. It was the first adult conversation I’d had in weeks that didn’t involve passive-aggressive sniping or wondering how the hell I was going to keep the lights on. We talked mechanics, manufacturing, the kind of shit that actually made sense to me.
By the end of the call, they handed me a $480,000 purchase order.
And just like that, my life had changed.
But there was no time to celebrate. I had to move fast.
I called my manufacturers, my suppliers. I priced out bearings, pins, high-tech components. I ran the numbers and realized something—buying all the hardware alone was going to cost as much as my 401k. Not the manufacturing, just the parts.
So, without telling my kids mother, I cashed it out.
The numbers were too good. An 81% profit margin. I wasn’t going to let that slip through my fingers. I took every penny, bought the materials, made the calls. No hesitation. No fear. Just action.
At that time, I had several companies interested in hiring me, most of them based in Boston—Teradyne and LTX both dangling offers around $120K to start, double what I had been making. I never realized I had been underselling myself for so long.
Then Credence reached out. I interviewed with Jim Hannan, who spoke about building a new department from the ground up, with me running it. The job was in Hillsboro, Oregon, and came with a $120K salary plus stock options.
The catch? It would take time to create the position and bring me on board.
The kids’ mom skimmed through the benefits package. For the first time in a long time, a faint smile appeared. She liked the dental plan.
A week passed. Then my phone rang again.
A voice I didn’t recognize.
“This is Ray Rincon. Texas Instruments.”
He wasn’t calling to chat. He wasn’t calling to congratulate me on my new venture.
He was pissed.
“Where the fuck are my VLCT rings?” he yelled.
I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn’t work for Tokyo Seimitsu anymore. That wasn’t my problem.
“I don’t give a shit where you work,” he cut me off. “I need those rings. Can you get them?”
There was a pause.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. Send me a quote.”
Thirty minutes later, I had another purchase order. This one for $620,000.
That was over a million dollars in commitments.
I still didn’t have a job, but I was on my third interview with Credence. I made it clear—I needed something sooner rather than later, or I’d have to take one of the offers in Boston. That lit a fire under them. They decided to bring me on as a manufacturing engineer, a temporary role to get me in the door while they finalized the new department.
I met with the manager, who acknowledged the temporary nature of the position but made it clear—they could really use someone with my skill set permanently. My ego swelled a little. Then came the words I had been waiting for: an offer would be sent, and we could start the hiring process.
The house was still filled with resentment. The kid’s mother still looked at me like I was a failure. I was sitting on more money in theory than I had ever seen in my life, and yet I had no idea what to do with it. I had no safety net, no backup plan. Just a gamble I was hoping to win.
I needed more capital to fulfill the Texas Instruments. I called my dad—not my organic father, that useless bastard, but my real dad. The one who actually gave a shit.
I told him I needed $40,000.
“You got it,” he said. No hesitation. No questions. Just like that.
And just like that, I had what I needed.
I found a machine shop willing to work on credit, assembled the orders, shipped everything out. First order—done. The second order—the VLCT rings—all packed and sent. Everything was working.
After assembling and shipping out the Lucent Technologies order and managing the Texas Instruments deal, all while waiting for the slow bureaucratic churn of Credence to finally spit out an offer letter, reality hit me like a freight train.
I learned the hard way what Net 30 really meant—translation: You’ll get paid when we damn well feel like it. The orders had shipped to Lucent. The invoices were sent. But the money? Nowhere in sight. My bank account was running on fumes. No 401k. No job. No savings. The mortgage was due. The bills were stacking up like some cruel cosmic joke.
On paper, I was a millionaire. In reality, I was just another guy staring at an empty bank account, waiting for money that felt like it might never come.
And with the kid’s mom absorbing all this information, the response was exactly what I expected—pure chaos, zero support. How could you? Why would you? We can’t. Why? No. It was never about problem-solving, never about moving forward, just an endless interrogation designed to keep me on trial.
The partnership had ended long ago, but now, there wasn’t even an attempt to mask it. No support. No celebration. No acknowledgment of the potential job offers. No interest in understanding the plan. Just untethered anger, blind and directionless, lashing out not to solve anything but to hurt, to punish me for what I had done.
This had been festering since the pregnancy, slowly, silently, like rot in the foundation, but now, it was bursting through the surface, ugly and undeniable.
So, I did what I had to do. I found a way to make money, to pay the damn light bill. And just as importantly—I found a way to escape my children’s mother.
I took a job at the Safeway warehouse. Night shifts.
Hard labor. Hauling bananas, stacking pallets, wrapping them in plastic. Building loads like some kind of fucked-up game of Tetris. Old-timers showing me how to stack properly, how to balance everything so it didn’t fall apart.
During the day, I was still answering calls. Still making deals. Still pretending like I wasn’t working a survival job just to keep my family fed.
Then Jim Anderson called again.
That asshole.
“Tell me about the LT 1101 Credence docking hardware,” he said, like I still worked for him.
I had had enough.
I gave him the wrong information. Let him spin in circles.
Then I picked up the phone and called Ken Burnett at Dallas Semiconductor.
“You looking for an LT 1101 with side docking bars?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I can make that for you.”
Another order. Then another. And just like that, the momentum started rolling.
Then I got a call from Steve Wolf at Teradyne, asking me to work with AMI in Idaho—another deal, another win.
And then, the moment everything shifted. The same day I finally received the long-awaited payment from Lucent Technologies, an offer letter from Credence landed in my inbox. It was everything I had been waiting for—security, stability, a guaranteed paycheck. But instead of relief, I felt something else.
I picked up the phone, called Jim Hannan at Credence, and thanked him for his time, for working with me, for believing in me. And then, I turned it down.
A decision that would change my household forever. A choice that would set my kids up for a better life, even if it meant stepping fully into the unknown.
Within two months, at the age of 30 years old—by the end of the year—it had all come full circle.
Over a million dollars in my hands.
I paid my dad back. With interest. Paid off the machinists. Paid off everyone.
And then Uncle Sam took $400,000 in taxes and it didn’t bother me paying those taxes, because that was the start of Systematic Inc..
And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t answering to anyone but myself. No boss. No orders barked down from above. Just me, calling the shots. And yet, at home, there was no celebration. No acknowledgment. No matter that I had paid off every last cent of our debt. No matter that I could finally afford to hire a contractor to finish the remodel that had sat in limbo for years. No matter that there was money in the bank and more orders rolling in. No parade. No fireworks. No fire trucks blasting their hoses in a triumphant arc of rainbow-colored success.
Instead, the shift from argument to resolution morphed into something uglier—a need to hurt, to punish. The tactics we swore we’d never use, the abusive patterns we promised we’d never repeat, suddenly became the weapons of choice. The same manipulations our mothers had wielded against us, the same poison we once swore we’d never swallow.
I saw my mother in her. I saw my mother-in-law. Every time she dug in, every time she twisted the knife, I recognized the echoes of the women who had raised us, the generational cycle of resentment and control, now playing out in my own home.
I confided in Brother Brown, the contractor I had hired to finish our home. He saw it too. The shift. No longer the supportive, submissive Mormon wife and mother—no, this one had found her weapon, and she wasn’t going to put it down.
And it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter how much money I brought in. It didn’t matter that I had pulled us from the brink of financial collapse. It didn’t matter that I had done everything in my power to provide stability.
Because when something is rotting from the inside, no amount of money, no grand gesture, no effort, no prayer, no sacrifice—nothing—can stop it from collapsing.
And I was about to learn, in the most painful way possible, that once the foundation is gone, it’s only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down.
