Richard Anderson opened Santee Welding for business on March 1, 1976. He has owned and operated the business at its present location since that time. For some years previously, Mr. Anderson had been employed in a variety of welding-related industries. This included ship and boat construction, repair, and component manufacture; military ordnance construction; proprietary OEM; structural steel; and nuclear power plant piping, pressure vessels, and associated structures. Mr. Anderson also worked as classroom instructor of welding theory for a San Diego commercial trade school. He has been many times rigorously tested and certified in numerous welding processes and procedures, including the ASME 6G all-position pipe certification of unlimited wall. Through subcontracts involving General Dynamics and NASA, he built hoisting gear at Santee Welding to lift the Jupiter probe into the Space Shuttle, as well as stainless steel fuel interlocks for the Shuttle. Santee Welding also constructed solid copper hold-downs for high-energy plasma Tokamak fusion research. That kind of stringent quality control is a subset of Mr. Anderson's welding skills, knowledge and experience.