Daniel was truly a be a shining star, but when we welcomed him into the company, he was like a star on its last dying legs, not knowing whether it would ever break from its cocoon to be this beautiful star, and dwell up like the remnants of metamorphosis gone wrong. He had all the makings to fill the holes in all our gaps, but the mindset of a worker bee. We all knew that Daniel was a work in progress, and so who came after him would eventually define the team. What we needed in the team, were people who had a lot of experience in escape rooms. The next person I had in mind, would have been the youngest, was someone that I knew I wanted, but not the right time to ask him. By all means, he was the sole reason I started this quest in the first place. It took me several days to live with the fact that I was not going to ask him, and it was not the right time for him.
With my first choice not available, I had another friend who came with his companion. A hoot of a couple, they were so enthusiastic about escape rooms that I succumbed to have sharing interest with them, and their competitive nature didn’t hurt either. I remember walking into his room, after it was “cleaned”, and it still looked like an escape room on its own. There were so many things throughout the classroom, and all of them lead to the middle of the classroom, where a bunch of desks was merged to form a bigger table. In the center of the table was a female, who was known as Peter’s friend. Hong Ha was a new friend from New Mexico, who was here in San Jose, visiting with Peter and working together with him as part of their youth outreach for the church. Bubbly and inquisitive, Hong Ha was probably as committed if not more, to the fact that we would start an escape room. Peter was already in when asked without hesitation, for his love of working with people, and his handiness with locks in Escape Rooms.
Hong Ha turned out to be the master of all ciphers, having the tone to memorize Morse code by heart. Her love for escape rooms grew, and our time in escaping them only improved. She is one of two owners, who despite having a full-time job, also applied and worked as a part-timer for Omescape Games. With her insight into how Omescape runs their business and my insight on how Off the Couch Games runs their business, it was easy to work together to build a plan on how to open ours. Securing Hong Ha, made the team feel 99% complete.
Once Hong Ha and Peter were a part of the team, my heart still held out for the prospects of asking the same individual who planted this seed into our group, the young mastermind behind all of it. After all, it was his Inception Plan that started this avalanche, but . . .