Utah entrepreneur Gary Crocker's passion is to lend a hand

Utah entrepreneur and philanthropist Gary Crocker has a habit of offering a hand early, before it's clear how things will turn out.

The help he offers comes in as many forms as the need it serves — a money boost for a life science idea in its very infancy, well before a venture capitalist would sign on, or funding for a program to help children whose lives might not go so well without intervention.

With his wife, Ann, Crocker has supported a program for girls with emotional disorders, built a house for young scientists in training, supported symphony and opera and education. His company, Crocker Ventures, provided early money for cancer research that centers on broken signals, for "virtual histology" that could do away with the need to sacrifice an animal for research, for teeny "nano" grappling devices etched in silicone wafers used in research.

His investment in others is rooted in the truth that his own life was forever changed by what others did for him.

His father, LaMar Crocker, a firefighter, was so tied to the notion that Crocker and his siblings must have a college education that he moved his family to a more upscale Salt Lake neighborhood where he thought college would be a peer-level expectation, not just an option.

It paid off. A young Crocker excelled in school and Harvard rewarded him with the educational opportunity of a lifetime, a scholarship.

The family move set other things in motion, too. In the new house east of Foothill Boulevard, Crocker met the red-haired girl next door he would one day wed. He married Ann Sorenson after his junior year at Harvard. She had recently graduated from the University of Utah. They then headed to a "honeymoon" in Brazil that was actually a research trip for his senior thesis. He wanted to know what wage differential would draw someone from often hard-scrabble family farms to the more stable pay of a multinational factory. That view of how business could improve lives prompted a switch from pre-med to a business major, although medicine would remain a focus.

U. President Michael Young lived across the hall from Crocker at Harvard. What's so interesting, he says of his longtime friend, is that "Gary doesn't say, 'What's a moneymaking idea?' He starts from the perspective, 'What are the needs in the medical arena that really will address problems people face and make their lives better?' From there, money follows." Young calls Crocker "almost certainly one of the most imaginative entrepreneurial businessmen in the U.S. — maybe the world." He is, Young notes, "a funny combination of hard-nosed businessman and altruist."