Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas? Well, if you didn't, why don't you try this? Just take out a billboard and ask the whole world for it. For example, all this man wanted for Christmas was a Latina girlfriend. If you or someone you knew were a potential Latina girlfriend, you could email Marc at [email protected].
How do you think that worked out for him? You might be surprised. In fact, a lot of things about this guy might surprise you. Let's take a look at Marc Paskin, a millionaire who knew exactly what he wanted.
There's a lot of criticisms that people make of the very wealthy. You're probably familiar with most of them. Me personally, my biggest criticism of the rich is that they just always seem to spend their money in the most boring way as possible. Like, a screw making another company to make more money, to make another company to make more money. Why don't you build a palace? Not even a palace. What if you built a mansion that was full of needlessly complicated traps? What if you made a device to block out the sun? Or, alternatively, if you don't want to be evil, what if you just used your wealth to fill the world with silly little bits for your own amusement?
Well, allow me to introduce you to Marc Paskin, the millionaire behind this billboard and many others like it. Although he'd been successful for quite some time, Marc first steps into the spotlight in 2011 when he appears on the reality show, The Secret Millionaire. Like most American reality TV, it was adapted from a British show. The general concept was that a millionaire would temporarily leave behind their life of luxury and live anonymously among a poor community, and they would have a very small budget while they did this. In Marc's case, it was just $40 in a week. And then at the end of the show, they revealed to the locals that they'd actually been a millionaire this whole time, and they donate at least $100,000 to charities that they worked with. This episode begins with Marc, who was 61 years old at the time, telling us a bit about his backstory. He grew up in a poor family in Wisconsin and dreamed of living somewhere warm on the beach. After getting out of college, he took his life savings, which at the time was just $1,000, and he used that money to buy a duplex, which, goddamn, I cannot fathom buying a duplex or anything close to $1,000, but y'know, this was several decades ago.
Marc would flip this property and get into bigger and bigger investments over the course of 30 years until his real estate business was worth several millions of dollars. And after that, he got his beach house. He also told the story of his wife of 28 years, Marsha. She had been with him since the days when he was poor and had passed away due to diabetes. He then found himself at this point where he was single, his kids were growing up, and he was in this big house all by himself. He asks, what's even the point of having all this money? So he decides he'd enjoy it more if he just gave it all away. During his time in Detroit, he was tasked with finding local organizations that were making a difference in the community. He found three such groups: The Man Network, which was a neighborhood watch that made sure kids could get to school safely. Young Detroit Builders, who trained young Detroit residents to rebuild homes, and Really Living, who provided transportation and financial support to sick people without health insurance. It seemed like each group genuinely made an impact on him, but he was moved to tears when in the course of working for Really Living, he met a dialysis patient named Courtney.
She was a 24-year-old mother whose daughter also had severe health problems. In addition to the donations he gave to each of these organizations, he would also, somewhat to the surprise of production, give Courtney a personal check for $20,000, which was beyond what the show required of him. After the episode aired, Marc did an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune, and they asked how he got involved in the show.
Marc: The producers of Secret Millionaire heard about me and my involvement with charities and contacted me. After learning about the show, I liked it. I was already helping needy people and charities — the only difference was they would be following me with a camera. Plus, I'm a ham and thought it would be fun to be on TV.
It seems like perhaps with this experience, he caught a bit of a bug that would forever alter the course of his life. Although clearly, those seeds had already been planted somewhat as he mentions he's an Elvis impersonator, too. In fact, you can see a video of him on YouTube at the Elvis Convention in New York, where out of 2000 "Elvi", he apparently won the worst Elvis impersonator award.
He concludes the interview by saying:
In the interview, he also mentioned that he'd been receiving a lot of requests for help since the show aired. And he wanted to do as much as he could, but he couldn't help everyone. This situation would eventually be channeled into a TV show of his own. On April 18th, 2012, Marc Paskin returned to TV with his new show, Uncle Kokua.
The show took place in Hawaii and aired on local Hawaiian television, where he lived part of the year. The concept was that his assistants would help him go through all the requests for help, and they'd debate about and ultimately decide on who should get the help. This was a concept that he'd revisit for a number of holiday specials. But Marc Paskin's most well-known exploit would come in the months following the debut of Uncle Kokua.
That December in San Diego's Barrio, Logan, which the San Diego website describes as "The epicenter of the city's Mexican-American culture", Marc would erect his infamous billboard:
All I want for Christmas is a Latina Girlfriend.
Email Marc: [email protected].
This whole thing, aesthetically, just has a vibe that I can only think of as being a cross between Happy Birthday RAKESH, and Jerry the King Lawler's Instagram posts.
It's very quickly posted to r/WTF by a Reddit user named Mexicanmilkyway. You get some commenters who are a bit tempted to message him.
whoadave: Dooo it! He's rich!
That user actually did wind up emailing him.
A lot of people also express shock at seeing an AOL email address in modern times. Some cosigned his interest in a Latina GF, while others, of course, found it creepy or offensive. It's so funny to think about the difference in how you'd perceive him if you saw him first on TV versus how most people saw him first on that billboard. Like, on one end, you have this kind, selfless old man who's literally brought to tears seeing other people struggle versus this billboard that's got the vibe of an OnlyFans reply guy brought into real life.
The billboard would go on to get a lot of news coverage with outlets clarifying his identity and his past on reality TV. Four days later, the billboard would be vandalized with his email address torn off. Some said it was rowdy kids that did it, while others assumed that it was locals who were offended by this. In any case, soon after, the whole thing was removed and after it was taken down, Marc Paskin will release a statement:
Due to the nature of this strange public ordeal, a lot of people thought that maybe this was some kind of viral marketing for another TV show, but no such show ever emerged.
So it seemed like he probably actually was using the billboard to really find a Latina girlfriend. 15,000 potential Latina girlfriends is a lot to go through, though. And surely of those 15,000, a lot of them are not serious. But perhaps some of them were.
Did Marc actually succeed in finding a Latina girlfriend through his billboard? The truth wouldn't be known until a few years later. That would be in 2015. Denver, Colorado got a new radio DJ, Gary Ganja, the host of Smokin 94.1.
Don't be fooled by the wig, guys. That Gary Ganja is, of course, Marc in disguise.
He had just purchased a local radio station that he called K Bud for $875,000 and invested a million dollars total into this project. And on the station, he would play a bunch of weed-themed music and stuff like Cheech and Chong clips. Matthew T. Hall of the San Diego Union Tribune would catch up to him once again and ask, ask, why?
And then we find out the answer to the Latina Girlfriend question.
The 66-year-old said he wanted to retire last year after a wildly successful 35-year career in real estate. He wanted to spend more time with his children and grandchildren and his similarly-aged girlfriend, a semi-retired paralegal and Latina, whom he met, yes, via one of his 15,000 emails from his Barrio, Logan Billboard solicitation.
As for the question of why make a weed radio station out of nowhere at the age of 66, he said that he just asked himself: "What would you like to do that had nothing to do with money?" and he came up with the weed radio station.
In the years following, he would occasionally pop up in the news from time to time with various charitable things, such as in 2018 when he gave money to help reunite migrant children separated from their parents.
Most recently, though, in August of 2024, Marc came back with another billboard:
We don't need another President. We need a King. Vote Marc "Elvis" Paskin, Independent.
He was running for President as Elvis.
He didn't win this time, but there's always 2028.
