MEET RICHARD

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 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 just want a fair shot and a system that does not cheat them. I have spent thirty years fighting for people like you. And that's who I will go to work for 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 don't owe anyone anything — except to you, The Rule of Law, and 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