A Southern California native, Sammy has always had an interest in wildlife and birds, compiling yard lists and lifers throughout his younger years. His passion for birding deepened in college after taking an ornithology course in northern Michigan and gaining his first research experience conducting point counts and transects. He spent a summer between undergraduate and graduate school working as a point count technician for the Intermountain Bird Observatory in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho. For his M.S. at Utah State University, Sammy studied the nesting behavior of White-headed and Black-backed Woodpeckers in the Eastern Cascades of Washington.
After graduate school, he returned to the Los Angeles area where he taught biology at Oxnard College and California State University Channel Islands and also served as the vice president of the Conejo Valley Audubon Society. Now, Sammy is a full-time guide living in the foothills of the Central Sierras, where he is excited to help others discover the rich biodiversity of California.
