Randy was born April 2, 1956 in Montreal, Canada.  He was the youngest of three children to Robert and Rita Hurst.  He was predeceased by his mother in 1999  His father, sister Pam(Richard), and brother Bob(Trish), still reside in Canada along with nephews Phil, Kevin, Jason, Josh and Jeffrey.

At the age of 6, his family moved to the United States and lived most of his life in San Mateo, CA.  He attended the local schools and his fondest memories were his years as a San Mateo High School Bearcat. An athlete all his life, it was there that he excelled on the grid-iron as a defensive back and achieved many prestigious awards, including being named to the All-American Team, All Northern California and first team Mid Peninsula League standing.

It was also at San Mateo High School where he and Joanie began dating when they were both 16.  They finally got married in 1985 after 13 years of courtship.  In 1988, his daughter Allie was born.  From that day forward, his main priority changed to being the most devoted father and husband he could be.

Throughout Allie’s athletic career, he was actively involved in coaching her teams. If he wasn’t coaching her, he was her biggest supporter – only missing about 5 competitions since she was 5 years old. For the past 6 years, he has been the Assistant Cross-Country and distance Track & Field coach for Hillsdale High School.  He was a strong positive influence on all of the athletes he coached and made a huge impact in both their athletic and personal lives.

Besides doing everything to maintain a strong and fit lifestyle, Randy loved traveling to Hawaii, enjoyed the sites and smells of Lake Tahoe and Yosemite, and just spending time with his family.  He was also the proud owner of 2 yellow labradors, Sierra and Makena.

Randy is also survived and missed by Joanie’s family; mother in law Lillian Ishida, brother/sister in laws Howard (Rosalie), Jerry, Diane Ishida and Doris (Frank) Lazo, niece Kimberly (Barry), nephew Jeffrey (Caitlin). His new grandniece, Kalina, put a smile on his face every time he saw her.  He was especially grateful to Jeffrey and Caitlin for being surrogate parents to Allie  while away at school in San Luis Obispo.

He was employed within the publishing industry for the majority of his career; most recently with McGraw-Hill in San Francisco.  Prior to that he was with Mayfield Publishing, Stanford Press and Wadsworth Publishing. We’d like to add some thoughts about his professional life from his previous manager, Linda Toy:

“I first met Randy several years ago over coffee quite a while before we actually began working together, and one of the things I looked forward to for many years after that were our walks together to get coffee and to talk about issues and problems that came up at work. But during those walks, we also shared news of our families and friends, and we talked about things that happened in the world. I quickly learned he was an expert at his job, and he was extremely professional in the way he did it. He did all he could to achieve his work goals, often under extreme deadlines and often with difficult problems. It seemed he sometimes had to work miracles to help us stay on schedule, but he always did it and, he did it in the most positive, helpful manner possible.

Everyone loved working with Randy because he made your job easier. He was always respectful to everyone, and he was strong and thoughtful during difficult times, and he was always positive and good humored. For the last few years, he worked extra hard, coming to work at the crack of dawn, so he could leave in time to coach his team. His daughter’s life, including her team, her schoolwork, and her outside interests, was more important to him than anything, and he was always looking for ways to spend more time with her. It turned out he loved coaching and really cared about helping the kids, so he continued with that schedule even after his daughter went away to college. He talked a lot about his team and how much he enjoyed working with them and how much it fulfilled him. He loved working with the kids and the team. In fact, he was always all about the team, whether it was at work or at school.

Randy was never someone you just worked with. He was much more special than that. He was an expert at what he did and always a consummate professional. He helped people every day achieve their project goals. He was someone you went to when you had a problem because you knew he could fix it, and he made it look easy when it wasn’t. He was someone you really wanted to talk to, someone who was optimistic even when things were tough, someone to admire, and someone who looked as though he always enjoyed his job and certainly enjoyed life. He was definitely a good friend who always had great advice, a funny story, and the strongest, most comforting hug.”