Unplugged: March

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For Cameron Park's 'Aviator', The Sky's the Limit

By Michael J. Fitzgerald

Most weekdays, Jim Riordan works out of his at-home office in Cameron Park, dealing with the potential commercial applications of some hot new idea a client wants to patent, market, develop or even manufacture. It’s all part of the various services he offers to inventors through his firm, the James F. Riordan Company.
    Riordan, with his wife, Lynn, also runs a successful management-consulting business, helping people turn around problem enterprises. Most recently he found the root cause of one El Dorado County foothill firm’s cash woes — an employee recently convicted of embezzling more than $100,000 from the company.
    But on weekends, he prefers to be traveling at 80 mph (or more), 3,000 feet off the ground, often upside-down, in a 486-pound aircraft he built himself.
    “I love anything that gets me off the ground, safely,” Riordan says. “It’s total freedom.”
    Riordan’s flying began when he was a child in Arlington, Va., going up in various planes with his father, who had been a pilot in World War II. Since moving to California in the 1960s, the 58-year-old Riordan has owned various commercially built aircraft. Names like Piper and Cessna roll off his tongue like varieties of coffee.

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