Chasing Earhart

"I didn't go out looking for this story. This story found me." Dick Spink has many titles: Mount Vernon High School science teacher, boat builder, and Amelia Earhart investigator. He never intended to hunt for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. He specializes in boats. He put himself through Washington State University designing and fabricating aluminum boats. He now holds on to a day job teaching at Mount Vernon High School, but he’s also a naval architect and licensed master. He sells boat kits all over the world, from Singapore to Africa, and often builds clients’ boats on site. Which is how he found himself in the north Pacific, in the Marshall Islands, and deep into a quest to solve the most enduring of aviation mysteries. “Right now, to think I’m a leading researcher on Amelia Earhart? A farmer’s kid and school teacher from Mount Vernon? Unbelievable,” says Spink, a broad smile across his boyish face. He wears a brown fedora, a la Indiana Jones, and a brown leather aviator jacket with a Boeing logo embroidere