On a Monday evening in early October, Sebastian Paul Musco spent a few hours doing what he loves—watching his friend Plácido Domingo perform at his award-winning Musco Center for the Performing Arts at Chapman University.
The 3 ½-hour sold-out performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” was followed by dinner for 40 people around midnight. While the event should have had OC’s No. 1 opera fan smiling, the soon-to-be 93 year old was worried about the future of his beloved opera in Orange County.
Musco and two pals have been underwriting opera performances for years. It’s the music Musco started listening to as a child of Italian immigrants growing up in Providence, R.I.
While Musco’s philanthropy remains wide and unabated, he prefers to stay low-key about contributions, such as tens of millions to Chapman University and his role in raising $120 million for the campaign to build a new campus for the Norbertine Priests of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado Canyon.
He’s even more reticent to discuss the company he’s owned and operated for 45 years, Gemini Industries Inc., a private business in Santa Ana.
Musco’s generosity to entities like Children’s Hospital of Orange County, PBS SoCal and Orange County School of the Arts is the result of his building an unlikely global leader in the reclamation of precious metals recovered from spent catalysts.
Patriot
Musco grew up during the Great Depression, when his father was a school janitor. His parents taught him the value of tithing and a work ethic.
“They always gave,” Musco recalled. And his parents “never let us know we were poor.”
He didn’t graduate from high school because the 16 year old at the time was busy lying about his age to enlist in the Navy during World War II. His mother caught him at the enlistment office the first three times.
“I wanted to see the world,” he recalled. “I was all over the Pacific.” He’d end up a pretty fair sailor over four years. After the Navy, he got an office job at a manufacturer that worked in metals processing, ultimately supervising 200 salespeople. Before long, he said to his boss, “I want to fire a hundred and double the salaries of the others.”
The boss sent him to a troubled facility in Skokie, Ill. Musco fixed the plant, but when his reward was just a few shares of stock when the parent company went public, another character trait kicked in: He grabbed his wife and fellow arts lover Marybelle, and the pair headed west.
He started Gemini Industries, so-named because the owner is a twin. He capitalized the enterprise with a $500,000 loan from the Small Business Administration, bringing no business plan but more than a little experience in the precious metals reclamation business.
Musco ultimately bought out his two partners, and today he and Marybelle own 100% of the company.
They Do What?
Gemini started out recovering precious group metals, most notably platinum, but also palladium, aluminum and iridium, from the spent catalysts carmakers deployed in catalytic converters to reduce pollution.
Musco and his partners figured out how to do the work safely and profitably when far bigger companies couldn’t make such a business pencil out. The company did so well that Musco was called to Detroit in the early 1990s for a meeting with a team of General Motors executives, who asked if he was interested in an acquisition.
“We’re not big enough to acquire you,” Musco replied, laughing as he told the story.
Recovering precious metals from spent catalytic converters would become a crowded business, so Musco switched his gaze to oil and chemical companies. Companies like ExxonMobil Corp. use giant tubes of platinum to refine crude oil. Gemini, now with a factory in nearby Caldwell, Texas, reclaims pure platinum from the catalysts.
“We’re the biggest platinum mine in the world, and we don’t produce anything,” Musco said.
The Caldwell plant, which does business as Zodiac Enterprises LLC, is highly profitable, he said.
A byproduct at its Santa Ana factory is liquid alum, which it sells to clients like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to purify drinking water.
How much has technology, from data analytics to artificial intelligence, changed the way Gemini operates?
Musco laughed.
“This metals stuff—it’s pretty low tech.”
He has no advertising budget.
“There are 10 big oil companies that do 90% of the business in the world,” Musco said. “They know who we are.”
While the owner may not travel much and takes lunch at the same table in the same restaurants, Gemini is a global business.
“Top three in the world at what we do,” Musco said, “and we do business all over the world.”
Musco declined to disclose financial data.
What’s clear is that Gemini has a 45-year-record of profitability, to the point that the owner can fulfill his greater mission: charity.
Saving Opera
The Great Recession claimed many victims, including Opera Pacific, which gave its last performance in 2008 after 22 years and a peak of six performances per year.
The opera economic model is shaky. Opera Pacific reportedly received 60% of its budget from donations. You don’t have to remind Musco.
“A customer got stuck with $800 in tickets. I told him, ‘I’m in for $2 million,’” Musco said.
The Oct. 1 performance of “Don Carlo” by LA Opera at the Musco was a sellout. Musco reclaimed his outlay of $170,000. The opera was well-received, and Musco wants to convince new benefactors that saving opera isn’t folly.
“‘Rigoletto’ was my mom’s favorite, written over 150 years ago. I’m pretty sure it holds,” Musco said.
“There are young people who love opera. Elvis sang opera.”
He did?
“Pavarotti, ‘O Solo Mio.’ Elvis, ‘There’s No Tomorrow,” Musco sang.
That’s what Musco is hoping for—a tomorrow for opera lovers in Orange County.
Musco’s Favorite Sayings
They’re really aphorisms, not so much Robert Frost, but not Yogi Berra, either—just a combination of common sense and Golden Rule, easily summed up in two words: “Help others.”
• “I want to make as much as I can … and that way I can give the most away.” He confided he had a dream the other day about winning the combined $1.4 billion in lottery jackpots, “and when I woke up, I’d given it away.”
• “I’m the best friend you’ll ever have … till you cross me.” Yes, Musco’s Sicilian.
• “Why am I generous? I know how that makes a person feel.”
• “I don’t have a heart of gold. I deal in platinum.”
• “It’s better to give a million. It makes an impact.”
• “I’m no genius.”
• “Everyone is important, including the janitor.”
We ended a recent conversation in his office. Our talks were never short and always time well spent. I asked Musco what his personal indulgences are, beyond the chauffeured Rolls and penchant for eating out, most notably at Newport Beach’s Il Barone, Santa Ana’s Antonello and Irvine’s Bistango.
Surely he’s allowed himself and his wife to indulge in the fruits of all that hard work. He thought for several minutes.
The loquacious Musco was at a loss for words.
