Early Life
Steven Earl Parent was born in California to Wilfred Elmer Parent, a construction superintendent and his wife, Juanita, a homemaker. Parent, along with his three younger siblings, was raised in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte.
Parent attended Arroyo High School in El Monte and spent his time listening to popular folk music and playing the guitar. Parent's main interest was electronics and mechanics, an interest that led to trouble with the law. Parent was arrested several times for stealing radios for the sole purpose of tearing them apart to understand how they worked. He spent time in a youth correctional facility for the crimes. While in custody, Parent tested at a near genius level for electronics.
In June 1969, he graduated from Arroyo High School with plans to attend Citrus Junior College in Azusa, California, the following September. To earn money for college, he held two jobs. By day, he worked full time as a delivery boy for Valley City Plumbing Company in Rosemead. In the evenings, he also worked as a salesman at Jonas Miller Stereo on Wilshire Boulevard.
Read more about this topic: Steven Parent
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)