SHEBOYGAN, Wisc — Mary Katarincic still struggles to talk about her brother's passing four years later. Richard Brueckner was six years older than Katarincic. She said he always had a soft spot for her.
“He was a good man. He did a lot of good things,” she said, laying out her favorite photos of him. Brueckner died from COVID in May of 2020, leaving behind a huge standing in the tech industry as well as his autistic son, Logan — his clone, he called him.
"He was very modest," Katarincic remarked. "He did very well for himself, but we never knew that.” Her brother was a computer whiz — known by many high-profile colleagues as "The guy in the red hat.
" Brueckner kept that part of his life a secret from his family. "It was weird because I got all these phone calls from all over the world sending me their condolences. The president of Dell called me," Katarincic said.
"I had no idea Rich was that successful." In an effort to show off his passion for technology, Breukner had a custom motorcycle built in 2006. It goes by the name "Java Chopper" in honor of Javascript, the coding language.
When Breukner passed, his family went on a wild goose chase in Portland, Oregon to locate the bike. They cold-called every place they could think of that might have been storing it. After locating Java, Logan was the one to give the green light to use the chopper for charity.
“He got all the best parts of my brother,” Katarincic said through tears. The money raised in the bike raff.