We don't hear much about Ron Wayne, one of the three founders of Apple Computer in 1976. That might be because he gave back a stake that would be worth $22 billion today a mere 12 days after he got it from his partners, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It's probably also because the now 76-year-old Social Security recipient left the ultraconnected Silicon Valley to live in a Nevada desert town that only got telephones in the 1960s.

But Mercury News reporter Bruce Newman (and photographer Karen T. Borchers) tracked down Wayne at his home about 60 miles west of Las Vegas in Pahrump, Nevada. And they got more than a slice of the down-but-not-entirely-out life of the man Jobs once wanted to be Apple's "adult-in-chief," resolving disputes between him and Woz, his equally headstrong partner. It's a captivating profile that neither fawns nor pities one of oddest players in modern computing history.

Because you have to read it, I'll only serve up some appetizers:

Wayne was given a 10 percent stake in Apple, to 45 percent shares each for Jobs and Woz, meaning that he would have refereed any dispute. But he was afraid the boys – they were half his age – were so business-unsavvy and so assetless that creditors would go after him when things inevitably went bad. So he got himself out of the deal less than two weeks later, for $2,300. If he still had that stake, Wayne would be one of the world's 15 richest people. Instead, he sells "stamps, rare coins and gold out of his home to supplement his monthly government check."

Wayne has never owned any Apple product. He only recently bought his first computer – a Dell.

He hasn't heard from his former partners in years.

His main pastime seems to be playing penny slots in the wee hours of the morning.

He holds a dozen patents, but has never had enough capital to make money off any of them.

Apple wasn't his only failed opportunity to make it big. "There were at least six times in my life when I really thought that I had the world by the tail," Wayne says, "when I thought, 'I have an invention here that's going to make me a fortune.' And six times it blew up."

Kudos to Newman, Borchers and The Merc. Now, read on.

Photo: Ron Wayne's Facebook profile picture

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