The turbulent life and career of John Frazer, CEO of Pachydym toys.

John Frazer was born the only child of two farmers in Cupertino, California in 1976. He was the first member of his family to graduate college. At Caltech, he built remote control airplanes, railroad sets, and worked in a guitar repair shop during the summers. He says he has his father’s hands.

John got into toy manufacturing in the 1990's, traveling to toy conventions, pitching vinyl for use in action figures for a company called PetNet based out of Boston. It was at one of these conventions that he met his wife of 15 years. Her name was Chinatsu, but everyone called her-

“Chou, which means butterfly. — She was my best friend”, John told me over sushi in a corner of our cafeteria.

I met John during my time at Pachydym, the company he co-founded with Hal Child in 2005 when PetNet was bought out by the big guys. They started out with only two toys, John’s plush Rhinoceros and Hal’s already popular killer whale doll, and they’ve since expanded it into a worldwide brand.

They never wanted children. She was quaint and quiet, so he laughed when she surprised him with a tattoo of his Rhinoceros. John wouldn’t tell me where she had gotten it.

As it happens, Chinatsu was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009, so John spent 4 years between doctors with good news and bad news, with Chou’s ups and downs, up late scouring medical blogs, their kitchen and dining room became as cluttered as a law office as they formed a united front against the disease, they always discussed their options as if they “both had it”. He started cooking healthy, and for those 4 years he “never felt fully rested.” She died on Thanksgiving day, 2013.

He was with her through her treatment and pain management. He was there to say “oh, hush” when she’d say things like, “I never saw Paris”, or “I’ll never ride a horse again”, and then finally “I’ll never drink another glass of water.”

On Christmas Eve, 2014, Pachydym hosted their office Christmas party in the common area of the Langdon building. Some of the team had donned the halls with fake snow, holly and ribbon, and Ryan Brewster had poorly photoshopped pictures of the staff as familiar Christmas characters.

The receipt shows that the production assistants had bought five bottles of Southern Comfort, six cartons of eggnog, two bottles of Balvenie single-malt whisky, a box with twelve bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, a box of twelve bottles of Russian River Valley Pinot Grigio, an industrial pack of chocolate milk, and a tray of gingersnap cookies.

John says that he doesn’t remember what he had to eat that day, spending most of his time between the bank getting everyone their end-of-the-year bonus checks, and teleconferencing on his iPhone with Singapore and Vancouver. The catalyst that made this day so important, was that John dropped his phone on the marble inside of the revolving door of FirstNBC bank, shattering his screen.

“I remember shouting ‘God Dammit’ as I walked into this busy bank.”

John made a call from a teller’s phone and had Jennifer pick up the remains of his iPhone and drive it to The Apple Store, where she would spend all evening waiting in a line of last-minute shoppers. She told me that she had called her boyfriend twice, crying on Christmas Eve, but this is not her story.

John stopped by Hannigan’s on Broadway to have a drink with Harold McNamara, who was leaving the company after 8 years in marketing. They sat on the same side of the table. Harold confirms that John had a whisky and soda and that he looked “run-down” but “lively”, and that Harold had asked John if he had wanted a ride back to the office.

John put his arm around Harold and rubbed his shoulder; now: this is important because three other members of John’s staff confirmed that he had done this with them earlier that day, and that it was always supportive and “fatherly”; Jennifer says that he had probably picked this up after watching the dvd of “a black-and-white Christmas movie that he had remembered the week before—and I had amazon-ed it for him.”

John arrived at the party late, but was greeted with cheers, he carried “a tray of expensive Chocolates and a paper bag full of champagne [bottles].”

His tie came off and he became the center of attention. “Everybody wanted a handshake, they were happy, the office looked great— they were toasting me.”

At some point during this party, a co-worker, who I’ve been asked to call “Neil”, introduced John to his Japanese girlfriend, who we will call “Barbara”.

Barbara wore a red and gold sweater with jeans and silver heels that night. She is the type that nods when introducing herself. She is a children’s dance instructor in a major city, and english is her third language.

John was cordial and, “said something [to Neil] along the lines of ‘don’t let this one get away’.”

John spent the next 40 minutes having drinks with the marketing team in their offices, recounting his somber goodbye with Harold, and wishing Hal’s son a happy birthday via skype in his office. The call lasted 3 minutes.

Each pool of desks had a different DJ that night, so wandering between the corridors provided a slew of Christmas songs and different holiday smells and many similar conversations for John; the heat in the building had been turned up to 80 degrees.

John began stumbling at 8:45pm. He made an off-color joke by pointing back and forth between two co-workers whose department had planned to “hook them up” that night. Everyone laughed, Delan Nguyen “clapped uproariously.”

He was sweating, “he looked dehydrated”.

John was spotted by [Sarah] and her husband at 9:15 in his office with the lights off, they had assumed that he was talking on the phone. “He had his hands like this, one on his ear and one over his mouth, so we left his present outside and waved but I think he didn’t see.”

At around 9:20pm, the marketing team had merged into the sales department’s space where people were “drinking — making plans to head to Porter’s, which is a great bar that serves burgers” but John approached and interrupted.

“I didn’t even realize he was there until after everything stopped, I missed the whole thing. Yeah what did he say? ‘I’m so sorry’ or something?”