This story by Cheryl Miller appeared in The Recorder on July 28, 2006.
SACRAMENTO — Richard “Rick” Frank likes to say his legal career was shaped by being in the right place at the right time.
Ironically, the “right place” 37 years ago for Frank, now the No. 2 lawyer in the state attorney general’s office, was the site of one of California’s worst environmental disasters. Studying political science at the UC-Santa Barbara, Frank witnessed the impact of the 1969 Union Oil platform blowout, which coated 35 miles of coastline with black goo and killed at least 3,600 seabirds.