![Mike Miller '91 standing on his porch with palm tree in background]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1691712616/midpencom/iulko5emauob3xlcargc/MikeMiller.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1691712616/midpencom/iulko5emauob3xlcargc/MikeMiller.jpg","width":400}])
If it weren’t for Kurt, I don’t know where I would be today.
Mike Miller ’91
Mike Miller ’91 still remembers the first time he met his Core teacher, Kurt Lange, nearly 35 years ago. Mike was sitting in a chair while Kurt, who was just beginning his career as Mid-Pen’s PE teacher and athletic director, sat on a desk with his legs splayed out awkwardly.
“Kurt looked really silly,” recalled Mike, “so I asked him why he was sitting so strangely. He said, ‘I guess I’m just nervous.’ I was floored. No teacher had ever been that open and honest with me.”
That first meeting during Core class started a three-decade-long relationship. Kurt became Mike’s mentor and friend, and together they started Mid- Pen’s first baseball team.
Mike is now an entrepreneur, salesperson, and business owner in Southern California. He and Kurt still talk and text regularly, and Mike says it was Kurt who helped him believe in himself and set him up for success in life.
“He was the first teacher who accepted me for who I was. What we did together for those three years means more than anything in my life. If it weren’t for Kurt, I don’t know where I would be today.”
By his own account, Mike had an idyllic childhood growing up in Palo Alto. In school, however, Mike struggled to read and write. He remembered in third grade when the teacher was handing out spelling books, and he didn’t get one because he struggled to keep up with the class.
To avoid embarrassment, he told his classmates, “I’m so advanced that the teacher is getting my book from the junior high.”
Mike eventually enrolled in the Charles Armstrong School, where he received help for his dyslexia.
As Mike approached the end of elementary school, his parents divorced, thus beginning many years of shuttling from parent to parent and school to school. By the time Mike entered Mid-Pen in the fall of his sophomore year, he had attended ten different schools.
“I was in an awful place at that time,” he reflects. “But even though I had all these learning disabilities and people telling me I was stupid, I always knew I would be a success. Kurt helped me see that.”
After Mid-Pen, Mike attended San Diego State University. “I should never have gone there—or even been allowed to go to college,” he said, reflecting on his first year when he spent much of his time partying and surfing. At the start of his sophomore year, he walked into his first class in a huge lecture hall filled with students and no empty seats...and immediately left the room.
Two weeks later, Mike dropped out of college and was surfing in Costa Rica. He spent the next year and a half surfing and skiing while doing odd jobs to pay the bills. Eventually, he enrolled in a training program with commercial real estate firm Sperry Van Ness, “even though my only real job before that had been delivering papers.”
To this day, Mike does not have a college degree—and it hasn’t prevented him from pursuing successful careers in real estate and, later, sales. When he moved on to work at a telecommunications company, he became a top salesperson making multi-million dollar deals with clients like Princess Cruises and Verizon.
Despite his successes, Mike knew that working a desk job could never be a long-term career, no matter how lucrative. Partly because of his learning challenges, he has always been drawn to help people who were bullied, had developmental disabilities, or were marginalized. His compassion for others led him to create a home healthcare business.
In 2006, Mike’s wife’s grandparents hired a full- time independent caregiver from an ad. When her grandmother passed away, the caregiver stayed on to take care of her grandfather. All was well until several months later when the caregiver’s brother and cousin backed a truck up to the house and stole almost everything.
“I wanted blood,” Mike said. “My wife’s grand-parents had no money, and the stolen things only had sentimental value, but it was the principle.”
He spent months researching in-home care and then launched Home Care San Diego, an agency to provide senior citizens with support in their homes. Mike strives to maintain a company that puts its clients and their families first.
“I love working with the greatest generation; they deserve the best care possible.”
Mike lives with his wife, Barbara, and their three children, ages 18, 19, and 21, in Cardiff by the Sea.