Then & Now: At 20, he’s traveled to 14 countries

Then: This story originally ran Jan. 14, 2006, in the Lewiston Tribune.

CULDESAC — He’s only 20, but 14 countries have felt his tread. By the end of the year, it will be almost 30.

But his family isn’t wealthy and the name of his tiny hometown suggests a dead end.

“I’m from Culdesac, and I was able to do all this,” Gunnar Larson says as he leans forward. “It might sound corny. But nevertheless, anybody can do anything.”

“All this” includes an internship in C.L. “Butch” Otter’s congressional office in Washington, D.C., another internship with NBC in New York City, enrollment in two colleges and an around-the-world trip that featured some freelance journalism for MSNBC.

But the restless Larson was back in Culdesac Thursday, plopped ever so briefly in a cushy chair in his mother Tammy Larson’s living room.

And although a cul-de-sac has only one way in, it doubles as the way out. The view west from Larson’s childhood home is stunning on this steely gray day, leading the eye out of the boxed-in canyon into a vista of possibility.

Larson saw that possibility at an early age, Tammy Larson says.

“His third-grade teacher said at one time, ‘There’s a truck coming through and it’s name is Gunnar,’ ” she says with a knowing, sideways glance.

At 11 years old, Larson had started his own lawn-mowing business. By 15, he had bought his own pickup truck and expanded his business into Lewiston.

Tammy Larson says her son saved just about every dollar he made, but eventually splurged on a trip to Florida with a friend.

“Once he left here and got out into the real world, that’s when he found out he wanted to travel,” his mother says.

Larson’s journey began after he received an Al Neuharth scholarship that included a trip to a conference in Washington, D.C. While there, he decided to pop into Otter’s office to talk about proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

He just wanted to tell Otter the proposal needed some more thought, but he left with an internship application. He got the job and interned over the summer of 2003.

“Let me tell you, it was an eye-opening experience,” he says of his two-and-a-half months in the nation’s capital.

That summer he also became a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Millennium Scholar, a distinction that paid for the college of his choice. He opted for the small, private Albertson College in Caldwell.

There he fell in love with journalism. He landed a production assistant job at a local TV news channel with the help of a professor who was a political analyst for the station.

After doing grunt work for a while, he did his first news pieces on a college-sponsored charitable trip to build houses in Mexico.

“So my first story was an international story.”

Ever more interested in journalism, Larson — whose biological father is black — got a grant to go to a minority career workshop in Manhattan.

“I went to New York and I was absolutely amazed,” Larson says of the city he now calls home.

He applied for yet another internship while there, and in April 2004 got an offer to work in NBC’s executive offices at Rockefeller Center. He found an apartment — his half of the rent was $1,200 — but now he’s got a better deal staying with a friend who lets him just pay half the utility bills.

But wanderlust kicked in again. This time, Larson opted to do a semester at sea through a University of Pittsburgh program. In January 2004, an ocean liner, appropriately named The Explorer, left Vancouver, British Columbia, with him and scores of other like-minded students aboard.

And he carried with him a directive from MSNBC to produce his own stories while he cruised around the world.

The semester at sea got off to a rather bumpy start.

“He almost died,” Tammy Larson says rather sternly.

The Explorer was a new ship, but a storm nearly sunk it off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The passengers and crew were directed to life boats, and they nearly had to abandon ship.

If that had happened, all aboard would have surely perished in the cold sea, Larson said. But luckily the weather subsided and The Explorer eventually limped into a more hospitable Hawaiian port for repairs.

The trip continued with Larson visiting Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, India, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Venezuela, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia before he returned to the states.

He produced stories on the Vietnamese sex trade, a Kenyan warrior, Indian child laborers and others, some of which aired. Video clips of Larson’s work is available online at his website, www.gunnarlarson.com.

While there, Larson enrolled at Bond University in Robina, Australia, because, he says, it offers journalism courses that Albertson’s doesn’t. Still, he says he appreciates his stateside school for being so flexible with his fluid lifestlye.

“And he’s not done yet,” mom says of her only child. Friday he flew back to Manhattan to prepare for another jaunt, this time through Europe with a possible side trip to Egypt.

Larson’s ultimate goal is to anchor the NBC’s “Today Show.” Until then, he wants to keep telling the unnoticed stories from the global village he’s quickly adopted as his own.

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Now

True to his aspirations, Gunnar Larson went on to bigger and better things. After his 2006 interview, he studied at the University of Nicosia in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus and spent some time working for its CEO Antonis Polemitis. Over the last year, he helped launch Scenic Cyprus, a virtual reality service that showcases the country’s beauty. And he recently started working for a health care advisory firm as its director of corporate relations.

“I’ve been really lucky since that story,” Larson said. “I bought my apartment in New York and saved a lot of money. It’s kind of like hanging out on the beach, really, and I work when I want to.”

And even though he now calls the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan home, Larson misses mowing lawns.