 When he was fourteen, he became fascinated with a construction site near his home in the Santa Teresa foothills that revealed the remains of the Ohlone people who had lived in the region thousands of years before.The site later became the hacienda and headquarters of an 1835 Mexican landgrant, the Rancho de Santa Teresa, homestead of the pioneer Bernal family.In a time before historic preservation laws were enacted, the site, later designated as CA-SCL-57 (and later renumbered as CA-SCL-125) was being bulldozed and looted while a handful of archaeologists worked on the periphery outside of the construction zone.