Thomas Jefferson Pierce was born 31 years ago in Seattle, Washington.
His dad, Joseph Luis Pierce, was an environmental design consultant who
specialized mostly in landscaping, land-use issues, decontamination,
etc..  Typically he was called in from a design standpoint ("We're
building our new facilities, and need a proposal for..."), but
occasionally he'd get work on the liability end ("Our health plan has
paid out 37.9% more for mental health and cancer-moderation complaints
this quarter, and we need data for a liability suit against the firm who
designed our new Vancouver facility...").  His mom, Elizabeth Adams
Daley-Pierce, was a mid-level insurance executive in charge of the
Northwest CSA division of the Fraudulent Claims department.  Most of her
work involved supervising investigators and handling contract issues.
Both of them were frequent travellers (and took him along on a few trips),
and all in all they were slightly indulgent but very loving parents who
raised him on childhood stories of Hanford, supplemented with anecdotes
about public planning and convoluted tales of greed and the crazy schemes
people can come up with.

His parents always told him they were proud of his attempts to kick-start
his media career, even during the dark early days when he was scrounging
his way through film school by driving an electrocab on the graveyard
shift.  His mom in particular always encouraged his activist streak
(which first cropped up around 4th grade in that infamous CSA History
class).  His father was supportive too, but tended to advocate more
caution.  

Tom Pierce has always been comfortable talking to just about anyone; the
historic Seattle neighborhood he grew up in fed into a public school that
drew from the wealthy enclaves of the neonomadic software barons as well
as from the camps of the indentured agricorp fishermen.  Ten years ago,
his childhood home (along with that school and the rest of the
neighborhood) was rezoned and demolished to make way for the new sports
complex.

His mother died eight years ago.  He hasn't talked about that much with
anyone, and now only his old film school buddies remember "Pierce's Crazy
Mom Stories."  Once a year, he takes a trip out to the Seattle shoreline where her ashes were spread.

Joseph Luis Pierce is currently living in Cairo but spends most of his
time working on projects in Europe and the Middle East.  He trades mail
with his son, and they try to get together on holidays when they can.
(He's got a new partner in the business, a clever 35-year-old design
consultant from Northern Italy, and they're something of an item, which
he is somewhat sheepish about when Tom needles him on it.)



[Note that I'm leaving the 4th grade CSA History class mostly open, and
I'm leaving out a lot of childhood details.  I figure he was good friends
with Sam for however long Kim thinks Sam would've been in Seattle, and 4th
grade would be a fantastic time to get exactly the wrong ideas--as far as
the CSA is concerned--about what America really stands for. ;-) ]