https://www.siliconvalley.com/2019/11/10/opinion-trader-joes-success-defies-california-conventional-wisdom/

For years, I’ve told children, newspaper editors and other credulous people that I’m the Joe of Trader Joe’s. That’s a lie. But it’s true that the store and I grew up in the very same neighborhood.

As a Pasadena child, I would ride my bike two blocks from my house to the Trader Joe’s on Arroyo Parkway — the original store, opened by San Diego native and Stanford alum Joe Coulombe in 1967.