Bill Riker
Cochiti Lake, NM

Biography

In 1965, I graduated from Hobart with a BA, wife and child. After working for a packaging company in Rochester for 3 years I was transferred to Pittsburgh, PA. After two more children and a divorce, I married Christy in 1975. She brought three children into the fold and we added another. We remained in Pittsburgh through a couple job changes until I landed at Alcoa headquarters in 1987. The second half of my career, with Alcoa, was in HR information systems and, although officially retired, I'm still consulting for them a few hours each week.

Retirement brought us to New Mexico where we reside in a town named Cochiti Lake, actually on a Pueblo Indian reservation and next to a man made lake on the Rio Grande River south of Santa Fe and north of Albuquerque. Our seven kids have rewarded us with a total of ten grandchildren, mostly back east in Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Baltimore and Northern VA, so we've become frequent fliers on Southwest Airlines,

Besides the part time work, I'm keeping busy boating, horseback riding, hiking and gardening. Christy worked for 25 years as a preschool teacher in Pennsylvania and enjoys volunteering, subbing and teaching cooking enrichment at the local elementary school. The school is majority Indian with many Latinos and Latinas and just a few Anglo kids, which is not too different from the state as a whole. Probably the most interesting aspect of NM is the variety of cultures new to us; old-line Hispanic, Mexican and various Indian tribes. We have really enjoyed meeting and learning from the locals. We're experiencing new cultures without even leaving the US!

Hope to see many of you this summer.

Bill