Chris Gardner

  b. 1954 | American stockbroker

At The Bottom

— 1981

When he was released, the unemployed Gardner came home to find his apartment empty and his girlfriend and son gone.

Chris Gardner had just watched his big break in life evaporate before him, and now he was sitting in a San Francisco jail, humiliated over unpaid parking tickets totaling $1200.  Gardner had endured a difficult, impoverished Louisiana childhood that brought him abandonment by his biological father as well as physical abuse at the hands of his stepfather.  To make matters worse, his mother was imprisoned when he was 8 years old for trying to murder his stepfather, and he and his three sisters spent much of their childhood being bounced around  the foster care system.  Gardner managed to escape the horror by joining the Navy, where he developed an interest in medicine and made plans to become a doctor after receiving his discharge.  He abandoned these plans but remained within the medical industry, working as a lab assistant and medical equipment salesman.  His earnings were meager — the equivalent of about $30,000 a year in today’s dollars — and were not enough to support his girlfriend and newborn son.  A chance encounter with a well-dressed stockbroker driving a Ferrari inspired Gardner to abruptly shift focus.  Now, he suddenly believed, he was destined to be a millionaire.  His girlfriend thought he was insane; the parking tickets he racked up while futilely seeking jobs at brokerages seemed to confirm her judgment.  At last, it seemed he had landed a trainee position with E. F. Hutton, but the job disappeared when the man who hired him was fired.  Gardner’s girlfriend was furious, especially since he’d quit his sales job to accept the job that no longer existed.  When a loud argument between the couple brought the police to their apartment one night, Gardner was taken into custody.  Though he was not charged as a result of the domestic dispute, his outstanding  parking tickets led to a ten-day jail sentence.  When he was released, the unemployed Gardner came home to find his apartment empty and his girlfriend and son gone.