ARIZONA REGION – Rob Rockefeller was born and raised on Long Island, NY, which he describes as a suburban melting pot that did not instill the fabled New York City accent. His transition to Arizona was pretty conventional, too. A high school friend who attended the University of Arizona kept telling Rob how great the desert was, which ultimately led to a visit, which led to a pre-baccalaureate job search focused on the Southwest, which led to a position as an electrical engineer with Hughes Missile Systems in Tucson.
Interest in engines and vehicles is something that runs in Rob's family. A grandfather owned a car dealership (Nash, later American Motors) and his father owned a couple of full-service gas stations (Chevron and Esso, now Exxon). Rob starting riding and working on minibikes when he was in third grade, and once took a carburetor to school for show-and-tell.
At age ten or eleven, he bought a racing kart that had slicks and a live axle but no engine, refinished it in bright yellow, added a 5-hp Briggs and Straton, and started driving it around the neighborhood and other places where its low profile wasn't too hazardous. For example, in a near-by beach parking lot and on the playing fields at school. He blew up more than a few motors by trying to get above 30 or 35 miles per hour, or from trying to increase output by using ultra-thin head gaskets or burning alcohol.
His interests soon gravitated to Mustangs, Camaros, MGs, Triumphs, Fiats, etc. In the debates about American muscle cars versus foreign sports cars, Rob most often favored the latter. But the reality was that (as for the rest of us) he drove his parents' cars until he got one of his own, a 1976 green inline-six Gremlin. Not the car of his dreams, but it was his and (like most of us) he bonded with it, especially as a moving van on trips to and from college. But the muscle-vs-handling dichotomy continues. A brother spends some of his weekends drag-racing a 600-hp nitrous-burning 1980's Camaro; Rob spends many of his weekends autocrossing.
In 1988, Rob told his supervisor at work about nearly rolling his Honda Accord
while tossing it around an industrial park in Tucson.
His supervisor suggested that autocrossing might keep him saner and safer on
the streets, so Rob bought a 1979 RX-7 and began autocrossing on concrete pads
at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Loved the rotary engine, loved the autocross courses, got busy with other life
experiences.
Like a two-year stint in California at a different job and the multi-year
responsibility of raising a family.
But, on his daughter's sixteenth birthday in 2004, he handed over the keys to
his Geo Prism, consoled himself by picking up a 2000 Honda S2000, and finally
returned to autocrossing.
He'd been pursuing a variety of other hobbies during the long interim.
Photography, for one, which has been a lifelong attraction.
Rob especially likes digital photography, because
additional exposures involve essentially no cost.
He admits to having won a few photo contests, and is proud, as he ought to be,
of placing a photograph in the Arizona edition of America 24-7.
Also: online racing (mainly Project Gotham Racing 3 on an Xbox 360, where he
ranks near the 90th percentile);
electric guitar (he was in a four-piece band that played sites in Tucson
in 2000-01);
and MIG welding (on assorted yard and garden projects).
On most weekends, he joins his wife Allison taking their horses on trail
rides, using English gear and incorporating some cross-country elements
(like jumping over logs).
Rob is active in autocross clubs statewide: Phoenix, Tucson, Sierra Vista. He does some course design and newsletter work for his home club in Tucson, some autocross instructing for the Porsche club in Tucson, and photography everywhere. In particular, he developed – pun intended – the photographer section of our club's workerFAQ page. Rob is the Arizona Region's official go-to guy for questions about or assistance with event photography.
Rob has earned a few autocross trophies in each of the state's venues. In particular, he took second in AS Open during Phoenix's Summer 2005 series, and stole AS Open first from Gene Sanders in the Sierra Vista Spring 2006 series, 2898 points to 2889. He also took the Cone Killer award in Tucson for Spring 2005, with a count of 31. At present, Rob gets enough fun autocrossing in Arizona, but he keeps in mind that doing a national event would be cool.
Rob is presently a Chief Engineer at Raytheon in Tucson. Most of his professional career has been spent on embedded software, and most of that on missile systems.