Second in a series
Re “Getting Acquainted with a New Kind of Council Candidate, a King”
[img]2333|right|Christopher King||no_popup[/img]When new City Council candidate Christopher Patrick King was a teenager in Salinas and the heroes of his high school classmates were athletes, Mr. King was admiring the handiwork of one Bruce McPherson, a state senator, who represented Monterey County.
“I worked for Bruce because I loved how he was very progressive on issues that concerned me. On the environment, he was against drilling off the coast. He was very much pro-gay rights. He supported gun control. And he was also a business owner. His family owned a newspaper, and he continued the ownership when his parents died.
“What I really loved,” said Mr. King, “was his ethical stance, the way he could be a moderate, a business owner, and yet be progressive and represent a progressive district.”
At 31 years old, he owns a mortgage business, and the question arose of what drew him to this field.
“An accident,” Mr. King said. “When leaving high school, I received a scholarship from the Bank of America. They had a great marketing program. In the summer of my freshman year, they sent me a letter that said, ‘Look, we have invested in you once, and if you ever are looking for a summer job, we’d love to invest in you again.’
“I was working at Starbucks at the time, and I decided that working at a bank as a teller was a better career path.
“I was with the Bank of America for 10 months, and I started working my way up in the banking field as I was in school,” ambitious Mr. King said. “By the time I graduated, I was a fulltime loan officer at Chase, and I bought my first condo.
“I was starting to think of a more long-range plan for myself. I saw that working at Chase, owning a company was really the more sustainable, better route to go.
“I went back to school, at West L.A. College, took all my brokerage classes, incorporated my company (CPK Mortgage, Inc.), and started my brokerage.”
(To be continued)
