People: Klaus

Klaus has never had a mobile phone, owned a home, kept a steady job, attended college, or voted. When he was 19 he left the U.S. and has been traveling ever since. He is now 35. For the past twelve years, he has lived part of the year in a small town in Guatemala, part of the year with a family in India, and the rest at his parents' homes in Hawaii and Seattle. His father divorced and remarried with a divorcee, who had a fortune estimated at $60 to $70 million dollars as a result of her previous husband's investments in Costco. As part of a tax-sheltering strategy, she and Klaus's father gifted Klaus a substantial amount of bonds, and he now lives off the interest. He supplements his income by finding odd jobs wherever he lives. The day I met him he was washing windows at a new restaurant being opened by a friend of his. His circle of friends is some mixture of wandering expats and locals. He claims to have once sat down for a coca-cola with a 15-year old boy in El Salvador who, having been sufficiently convinced by Klaus that Klaus wasn't worth it, aborted an armed robbery.