Gary Stein

Gary SteinMinutes into a conversation about his involvement with philanthropic causes, Gary Stein's house phone rings. He disappears for a few minutes into the kitchen and then comes back, apologizing.

"That was a call from a realtor," he says. "I'm starting a new business. It's weird—I'm going to be a wasabi farmer."

For most people, becoming a wasabi farmer might indeed sound weird—or, at the very least, out of the ordinary. But for Stein, 63, a serial entrepreneur whose successes have allowed him to leave a generous endowment to Rady Children's, it's the next step in his lifelong plan to help people live healthier.

In the early 1980s, following an apprenticeship with a Japanese family in San Diego, Stein created a tofu empire when people didn't know what tofu was. With his new venture, Fresh Wasabi Farms, Stein plans to show people that the real stuff is a pungent, fragrant root thought to have anti-cancer properties.

"Everything [else] you see is just horseradish with food coloring in it," he says.

Stein has always been turned off by artifice—food coloring or otherwise. He became a hippie and gave up meat 42 years ago when he had an epiphany at a retreat in Hawaii. "I was barefoot for 7 years," he adds.

Decades later, Stein is still barefoot—for this interview, at least. And he still speaks of pretentiousness and vanity like they're dangerous toxins. But kids, he says, are innocent, which is why he loves them so. Stein sponsors two orphans in Tibet, an experience that inspired him to give to Rady Children's. He donated 75 percent of his estate, currently valued at more than $5 million, to the hospital in memory of his brother, Alan, who died of leukemia in 2000. "He was in the hospital for 61 days. He died in my arms," Stein says. The remaining 25 percent will go to a Lake Tahoe charitable foundation to create safe cycling lanes around the lake.

Additionally, Stein donated $32,000 to Rady Children's—half to care for cancer patients with financial needs and half for critical hospital equipment. "I felt really good that my money was able to do something now and set something up for the future," he says.

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