Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

Prep Flashback | "Golden Boy" was Totems' hair apparent

Fans showered Rob Rask with combs before games.

Athlete: Rob Rask, Sammamish High School, Class of 1979

Sports: Football, basketball

High-school rewind: Starting quarterback in football as junior and senior. Three-year basketball starter, and 1978 team finished second in state, losing to Garfield 58-56 in championship game. Totems football coach John Schindele once called Rask the "Golden Boy," and the nickname stuck. Seattle Times columnist Georg N. Meyers wrote that Rask was "excessively handsome, with a billowing crop of flaxen hair to stir the envy of a millionaire rock star." Entire cheering sections of rival schools threw combs at Rask before basketball games.

"My hair did not move at all. It stayed in one place the whole game," recalled Rask, who didn't ask for the attention. "I did not use a hairdryer, nor did I use hair spray. Nothing."

After high school: Rask went to the University of Washington on a football scholarship, then switched to basketball after one year. He didn't play sports his final two years but concentrated on fraternity (Beta Theta Pi) activities and academics as an English major.

After college: Rask immediately went to work for Nordstrom in San Francisco Bay area then transferred in 1985 to Los Angeles area. He left Nordstrom in 1989 to start a business and has been in shoe-related businesses of his own since.

Personal: Rask and his wife, Kelli, who grew up in Danville, Calif., live in Costa Mesa, Calif., south of Los Angeles, and have four children � twin sons Erik and Kevin, 16, who are athletes at Corona Del Mar High School, and daughters Lilli, 5, and Karli, 3.

Fast forward: Some of Rask's favorite memories of growing up in Bellevue involve his days at Hyak Junior High with friends who went on to Interlake and Sammamish high schools.

"We had a great group of guys at Hyak," he said. "We all had nicknames for each other, and we all played practical jokes on each other. There is an e-mail list of at least 40 people from Hyak from about five years both before and after my class and we keep in touch."

Craig Smith