Robin Yocum
1955
Robin Yocum is an American crime fiction writer known for several highly popular novels. He was born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1955, though he grew up in Brilliant, a small town in Eastern Ohio. With a steel worker for a father, he never had a chance to be indolent in his childhood years, as his father always hounded him off the bed before he left for work. He would also take him on a tour of the Weirton Steel Mill in West Virginia where he worked, while Yocum was in high school. The author has famously asserted that the mill was dirty, hot, and loud and his young mind thought it was the most dangerous way to earn a living. If his father’ intention was to motivate him, it clearly worked as he never wanted anything to do with the mill when he grew up. Over the years, he has worked a variety of jobs ranging from being a carrier for the local paper, the Wheeling Intelligencer, and a truck driver. He also baled hay, mopped floors at one of the major franchise restaurants, worked as a gas station attendant, and been the night janitor for the Steubenville Country club. Of all the jobs he held, it was the janitor job which gave him the motivation to graduate college, and move on to better things.