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July 2010 Times Publications Cover
 
SITE FEATURES
What's going on in the entire Valley.
 
What do you have to look forward to this month? The Valley's most popular Astrologer tells all…..
 
Renowned restaurant critics' suggested Valley eats.
 
A closer look into the private workspaces of some of the Valley's high-profile personalities.
OPEN DOOR POLICY
Award-Winning Feature Writing


Read The Times most recent Arizona Press Club award-winning stories, the most revered awards in Arizona journalism.

Read The Times most recent Arizona Press Club award-winning stories, the most revered awards in Arizona journalism.
Surgical Roulette
Peñasco Fiasco
Operative Fate
Walking Tall
Guilty
Frozen Assets
The Vanity Tax
Addicted Youth
Silicone Valley
Fatal Lapse
 
open door policy
Rick Smith
Just 20 years ago, brothers Rick and Thomas Smith were students at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale. Now the two head their 15-year-old business, TASER International, just a few miles away.

With outstanding stock valued at nearly $500 million, TASER was the topperforming stock during its first year as a publicly traded company. Today more than 7,000 police departments around the world use TASER’s non-lethal technology to subdue suspects.

Rick Smith, 36, recently invited The Times in for a look around his hightech headquarters. Inside, the $16 million building is a mix of James Bond technology, Men In Black design and Matrix aesthetics, complete with flat screens, cat walks, retinal security scans and a cylindrical titanium entryway with swooshing security doors.

As the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, Smith still has no office door. His bubble-like cubicle is the same size and layout as the other 250 employees’ in TASER’s honeycomb-shaped office hive
Chris Bianco


1. Muscle-building workout powder.
2. Lightweight bullet-proof vest.
3. Smith’s daughter.
4. TASER champaign bottle signed by the legal team, after a celebration over TASER’s first lawsuit victory.
5. Rick and Tom Smith with President Bush.
6. Car keys; there is no building key. Access into security areas is only granted by retinal iris scan.
7. iPod power plug.
8. Coasters. Gifts from New Zealand.
9. TASER water bottle.
10. Oakley Blue Tooth phone bud.
11. “My geeky glasses.”
12. “Everything in my office is within reach. Private offices lead to lack of productivity, and extra space attracts crap.”
13. Smith puts these headphones on when he wants to close out the noise from the other cubicles.
14. Italian aviation calendar. The plane featured, the Avanti Piaggio II, is Smith’s most recent jet acquisition. It’s also the corporate jet used by Ferrari. Smith won’t say what he paid, but Avantis sell for about $6.3 million.
15. Applied Bioelectricity. Smith’s B.A. is in neurobiology. He still visits the high-security R & D lab regularly.
16. Dell laptop base.
17. Apple high-definition flat screen display.
18. “My wife’s and my feet in a hammock. I like to look at those feet.”
19. Pocket PC.
20. “The catwalks are needed for good light-saber fights,” says Smith, who modeled the interior from the high-tech battleship look in a number of sci-fi movies.
Chris Bianco
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