Around the office, they called him "The Man From Rescue." It was as if he were some mythic figure, a John Wayne-type astride a white steed, ready to come down from the El Dorado County hills to heal the sick, save the crops and bring peace and prosperity to the
townsfolk.
Or, at the very least, to have him retool the magazine they work for.
Management at Prosper magazine, the 2-year-old business monthly, had looked long and hard for a new editor last fall. They had done a national search in all the usual places, winnowed candidates, pored over resumes, and still hadn't found the right leader. But the one place managing editor Michelle Margetts had failed to look was in Rescue, the hamlet tucked away in the foothills.
Fortunately, "The Man From Rescue" -- as Margetts affectionately dubbed Jeffrey S. Young -- happened to be surfing Craigslist one day last fall and read a job posting that intrigued him. In the time it took to click and drag an e-mail attachment, his résumé landed in the inbox at Prosper's midtown Sacramento office.
When Margetts was handed the résumé, she couldn't believe her luck. She had been rescued, as it were, by Young, perhaps the most overqualified worker in America to run the editorial side of a 35,000-circulation magazine.
Imagine her surprise to read these bulleted items, among others, on the résumé:
• Co-founder, MacWorld magazine.
• Silicon Valley editor, Forbes magazine.
• Co-founder, Forbes.com.
• Controversial best-selling author of "iCon," a biography about the rise of Apple's Steve Jobs.
Is it any wonder she ran to her desk and immediately called Young, 55, on his 5-acre spread in Rescue?
"I thought, 'Am I hallucinating?'" Margetts recalls. "I must have smoked my breakfast, because I'm clearly looking at something that struck me as too good to be true. ... So I call him and I'm like, 'Drive down the hill, dude. I'm here for you.' He came the next day."
And so he did. Sans the white horse and posse, ...
They called him "The Man From Rescue," Jeffrey S. Young
| Local News |
