Las Vegas entrepreneur ‘settling with the universe’

Alana Roberts

Friday, Feb. 20, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

Jeff Jonas, founder and chief scientist of successful Las Vegas software company Systems Research & Development, has a worn manila folder that contains the list of creditors to whom he owes a "cosmic" debt from a business venture that failed 20 years ago.

"Cosmic" because those debts were written off long ago by most of the creditors. But they're real enough for Jonas, who can now afford to pay them off.

The creditors are those Jonas says believed in him and helped him at age 16 to start his first company, Preferred Program Services, in his hometown of Healdsburg, Calif., in 1982. The company specialized in custom software programs for businesses.

"I've kept this folder two feet away from me for 20 years to pay it back. I've had it in this desk for the last six years," Jonas said during an interview at his office on Bermuda Road.

Preferred Program Services went bankrupt two years after its founding. Jonas attributes the company's failure to his being young and inexperienced.

"I just didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any reference point," Jonas said.

Soon after the first company went under, he founded Systems Research & Development in a car. He was homeless at the time and living out of his car.

Now SRD's software is well sought after by casinos and the government and is used to track criminals.

He said since the bankruptcy of his first company he has vowed to repay his creditors and -- most importantly -- the company's four investors.

In August of last year, with the help of his assistant Sally Gluckman, he set about trying to track down the creditors. He set aside about $200,000, which covers the original total owed plus 3 percent interest. He initially borrowed about $100,000.

One creditor, Bank of America, didn't know what to do with the repaid money. Jonas sought to return the $12,000 he owed to the actual bank branch he borrowed from in Santa Rosa, Calif. He said when he contacted the bank, he kept getting connected with different departments, and when he was finally connected with the bank's recovered bad-debt department, they told him not to send it.

"They were trying to refuse it. (They said) 'There's no point in sending it; we wouldn't know what to do with it.' I said, 'Too bad, I'm sending it,' " Jonas said.

So far, two-thirds of those creditors and all four of the original investors have been paid. Only about $30,000 is left out of the $200,000. "It's like reconciling financially with the universe," Jonas said.

Stephanie Heuer, of San Jose, Calif., is one of those creditors. She said she and her then husband, Nick Pavlina, loaned the young Jonas $10,000 because they believed in his vision. At the time, she and Pavlina ran a small business called Software Management Corp. in Healdsburg. She has since remarried, taking the name Heuer.

"We supported him, not only financially, but as a visionary," she said. "You can just see when people have the energy to make things happen."

Gluckman said it was not an easy task to track Heuer, who has lived in Japan, Norway and the Cayman Islands. To complicate the search, Jonas only knew Heuer by her former married name and not by her current name.

"I made phone calls to no avail. (But) we were on a mission; we had to get this done," Gluckman said.

Gluckman said that for a time Heuer was a diving instructor in the Cayman Islands, which led Gluckman to contact every dive shop she could find trying to locate Heuer.

Gluckman said she spent several late nights doing Web searches to find Heuer and her ex-husband. She finally got a break and found the phone number of Heuer's first husband's father, who hung up on her several times, thinking she was a telemarketer.

"The fourth time I said, 'Don't hang up. I'm not trying to sell you anything.' I try to tell the story and the man reluctantly says, 'I'll give you my son's cell phone (number),' " Gluckman said.

She was then able to contact Heuer's parents and Heuer later called Gluckman's office.

Tracking creditors down hasn't been the only challenge for Jonas and Gluckman on their quest. Keeping that manila folder close at hand for so many years hasn't always been easy.

Gulckman said that when the company moved to its current location on Bermuda Road in March, she misplaced the folder, which caused Jonas to spend hours going through boxes to find it.

"It was always in his bottom left desk drawer. It's just always been a reminder that it is a debt he had to repay," Gluckman said.

Jonas has sent letters to the creditors he has been able to find explaining his success and his ability to repay them. He said in the letter that if the person doesn't want the money, they can donate it to the Literacy and Education Awareness Project (LEAP), a nonprofit literacy program he founded benefitting children.

He said so far only one creditor, the Diner's Club, opted to make a donation, giving $1,200 to LEAP.

Heuer came to Las Vegas on Thursday to visit Jonas as a way to thank him, commenting that what Gluckman and Jonas did is amazing.

"It's just a really neat thing to do. There aren't many people out there who would feel obligated to do that. It shows integrity in business," Heuer said. "These days because you hear so much corruption, you don't hear a lot of people who have integrity and pay back their obligations."