MEET RICHARD: Personal & Professional Bios

I am the grandson of Ellis Island immigrants who came here with nothing but a willingness to work. My father served in the Air Force and became a banker. I was

one of six kids. In our house, everything was earned. Nothing was given. You

learned to work for what you wanted, and you learned it early.

My first job was a paper route. I was thirteen. After that came Burger King. Then a

dishwasher's sink in a restaurant, pumping gas, wrenching on cars, and driving a

forklift through high school. After that it was Cleveland State University at night —putting myself through school, working full time during the day, taking classes

nights, weekends, and even through summers. My full-time day jobs were bank teller, then bookkeeper, painting houses and light construction on the weekends,

then intern at Arthur Andersen the way a lot of working people start — filing

papers, making copies, and running errands for the managers and partners. They

let me sit in a cubicle as a tax accountant only after I graduated — cum laude.

I worked as a tax accountant, on complex tax issues and compliance for wealthy

people and Fortune 500 corporations, and later, forensic work reconstructing

books and records of failed savings and loans. But I wanted more and took the law

school entrance exams and did well. I got accepted to Penn and Georgetown, but

the math didn’t work. So I borrowed every penny I could and went to the College

of William & Mary — Thomas Jefferson's law school, the oldest in America — and it

took me many years to pay off that debt but public education was the key that

changed my life.

I am the first person in my family to graduate from college and law school. The

first to start and own a business. My brothers and sisters are working people, same as just about everyone I grew up with.

Pam and I married and moved to Charleston together right after our honeymoon

— building a life and a home in the Lowcountry from the ground up, the same way

I built everything else. We drove into Charleston in 1997 in used cars and

everything we owned in a U-Haul. More than twenty-five years later, she is still my best friend. We knew no one but after teaching criminal justice and constitutional law at Charleston Southern University I needed to do more to provide for my family.

I built a law practice one client at a time — one family at a time —solving problems

for people who needed someone in their corner and nowhere else to turn. I put

everything I owned at risk starting my own law practice. But the practice grew

word of mouth — not from advertising. Clients grew to trust me with their greatest personal and preventable family tragedies. I honored and fought for every one of them.

Nothing in my life means more to me than Pam and our two daughters. They are

my world. I am the kind of father who would not just read Fancy Nancy to his girls

— but we got dressed up as fancy and went out for pizza, just like in the book. I

could give you a hundred more stories like that one, and I would rather talk about

them than my resume. They make it easy to be their father.

I tell you all of this because I know you - your struggles and those of so many

South Carolina families — people who work hard, play by the rules, worry about

their family, and ask for nothing more than a fair shot and a system that does not

cheat them. That is who I have spent thirty years fighting for. And that is why I will fight for you and protect you just the same as your Attorney General.

I am not a politician. I have never taken a criminal defense case. I do not take a

dime in donations from anyone. I owe nothing to no one — except to you, The Rule of Law, and all the people of South Carolina—even the ones who don’t support me or won't vote for me.

The only thing you can give someone is the power of your example. —

Margaret Hricik