Personal Profile of Roland Pinto - Part I

When I was a young entrepreneur, a very dear friend of mine wrote an article about me. She was a wonderful gal and ended up going into journalism before finding her true passion in the wonderfully tasty and smelly world of cheese. Miranda, thanks for the wonderful article, it will live on here!

By Miranda McQuillian  

Imagine getting into an airplane, flying to Washington D.C., fighting a four-alarm fire, reviving a victim, jumping back into the airplane, flying back to Lincoln, and setting up and running an entire light and sound stage while doing your biology homework. To many, this sounds impossible. To Roland Pinto, it is a list of his hobbies, of course minus the biology.

Pinto is pretty young to have done all of these things. He has a motivated attitude, curiosity, and persistence which enabled him to try and succeed in hobbies that most people only dream of doing.

Roland's interests cover a wide range of areas, including the sky above and the Earth below. At age twelve, he began mowing lawns. He got a $1,500 loan from his dad with which he bought a mower from Sears. Within a few weeks he had built up a clientele, paid his dad back, bought a riding lawn mower, also from Sears, and hired some friends. This was the beginning of his first business that eventually grew to become the sixth largest lawn service and landscaping company in the DC area at the time.

When Roland Pinto was 14, he said he was so bored that he just started taking things apart just to fix them. He taught himself how to fix and install stereos and set up and control lighting systems and equipment. "I took things apart and put them back together again, and I eventually got the hang of it" he said. His first real job involving this talent was setting up and installing a stage lighting system for his junior high school auditorium.

"I did the whole thing, by myself. I couldn't believe it, and it worked," he said, almost amazed at him.

At 16, his lawn company was flourishing, so he bought a pickup truck, a trailer, his first commercial walk behind mower, and a $15,000 Honda Civic. He smiled sheepishly, "I guess I made a lot of money but had to spend it on equipment," he said.

However, because he was only 16, he couldn't sign contracts to do commercial work. Thus, he continued mowing with his base clientele of around 220 houses and decided to pursue other interests, which included a job at the National Air and Space Museum, a Smithsonian flagship museum located in Washington DC. Roland Pinto said his work there heightened his love for airplanes and he spent three of his four years there in the Aeronautics department working for REG Davies, that department's curator.

Unfortunately, the Smithsonian was not enough to keep him busy, so he joined the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, the number one in the nation at the time, as a cadet at age 16.

"They were the first to actually use computerized dispatch systems (CAD), and my station, Fire Station 10, had one of the two 135' ladders in all of Virginia!" he said proudly. He wasn't able to fight fires because of his age however.

At 17, he became interested in emergency medicine. He assisted on ambulance and fire calls and learned CPR and BLS (Basic Life Support). At that time he also got involved in the firefighting side of the business. Yet, he was still too young to advance past cadet. Once again, while continuing these new "hobbies," he pursued yet another interest, flying.

Pinto said he took his first flight at 16, but really started training at age 17. It quickly became his real passion.

"Oh God I love to fly! I can remember when I was 10, drawing detailed pictures of twin engine airplanes and I knew all of the airlines and airliners by heart," he said.

Brad Kusler, Roland's brother-in-law and pilot for 11 years at that time said that flying seemed to be a passion for Roland and very close to his heart.

"Flying is definitely in his blood, he very much enjoys it and that is obvious," he said, "and he knows more about planes than I do, and I've been a pilot for a long time."

No matter how much he wanted it though, being a pilot was not possible. "I wanted to be a pilot, I still do but I found out that my eyes are too bad to fly for the Navy," he said regretfully. However, he continued his flying lessons and still flies often. Soon following his first flight he turned 18, which was a huge turning point for his lawn business.

Once he turned 18, he could sign contracts and thus the commercial side of his business began. He spends around $35,000 of his own money on commercial lawn mowers, and other heavy duty equipment and began his commercial lawn and landscaping work.

His first contracts were from two Coca-Cola plants. Soon to follow was Driggs Corporation, a big construction company with a lot of work at good pay. Roland Pinto worked on both the commercial projects and houses and made a lot of money.