Regulars at the Red Sails Inn on Shelter Island asked for him by name, returning time and time again to hear him tell about sneaking into Dodgers games while growing up in Brooklyn or mingling with the Rat Pack in the Las Vegas of the ’50s.
Richard “Rick” Hills “” who died Dec. 27, 2006, in San Francisco “” was known to many on the peninsula, not only as a co-owner of Red Sails but also as a longtime Point Loma resident who was involved in the community.
“Everybody would come in and always ask if Rick was around and he would stop by and sit at their table or talk with them and make them feel like the best regular customers in the world,” said Bill Dargitz, co-owner of the Red Sails.
Hills moved to Point Loma with his family in 1977 after purchasing the Red Sails Inn with a partner who died five years later. In the early 1990s Jack Dargitz joined Hills at the helm, and a few years later, Jack’s son, Bill, made the partnership a trio. The father and son team will continue to run the business begun by Hills.
Born Dec. 25, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, Hills never lost his thick accent. He dropped out of high school at age 16, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. It was this tragic attack that motivated Hills to join the Marines.
“He was definitely carried up in the spirit of the greatest generation,” said Hills’ son, Richard. “I think he wasn’t even old enough to join and he fudged his age to be able to join.”
Hills served four years as a Marine in the South Pacific, stationed mostly in Guam, a small, organized unincorporated territory of the United States, according to son Richard Hills.
After his service, Hills returned to the East Coast, where he obtained his General Equivalency Diploma (GED) and met wife Georgine in 1952. A year later, they wed. The couple were married 47 years before Georgine passed away in 2002.
“Theirs was a great love story,” said Richard Hills of his parents.
While working in New York in the early 1950s, Hills had the opportunity to move to Las Vegas, where he worked as a bartender at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino, the second resort hotel to open on the Las Vegas Strip.
“It was kind of an emerging Rat Pack “” Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. “” time with the whole aura that that entails,” said Richard Hills, who was quick to note that his father also witnessed the darker side of that era. It was a time when discrimination was commonplace; Hills was not supposed to serve African-Americans at the bar “” but that didn’t stop him.
While in Las Vegas, Hills got to know Sammy Davis Jr. and even met Elvis.
“He had a million stories, and they were all great,” Dargitz said.
But the glitz and glamour of Vegas didn’t last forever, and in 1956, the family “” with their young son Richard in tow “” relocated to the Chula Vista area. Daughter Connie was born a few years later, in 1959.
Through the late ’70s, Hills owned several liquor stores in Chula Vista and Bonita.
“He’s always been in the food and beverage industry,” said Richard Hills. “He’s definitely a self-made man.”
As a co-owner of the Red Sails Inn, Hills knew how to market and network.
“He was just so known by everybody in this town,” Dargitz said. “Probably his greatest asset was just to be the PR man.”
Hills’ son credits growing up in Brooklyn for his father’s no-nonsense street smarts as well as his ability to relate to his customers.
“He could read people in a heartbeat, but he was warm and gregarious and sociable,” he said. “He had a terrific sense of humor and he was a straight shooter. Everybody knew where he stood.”
According to Dargitz, Hills had decided to spend Christmas in San Francisco with his family since it had been six years since his last holiday visit. Hills had a wonderful time opening presents with his grandsons in his final days and gave no sign of illness, despite some trouble with his blood pressure in the preceding months.
“For the most part, he was healthy, happy, always liked to look at a pretty girl,” Dargitz said. “You know you’re doing okay when you can do that.”
Hills suffered a massive heart attack the day after Christmas and died at a San Francisco hospital.
“I think it’s the way we would all like to go if we had the choice,” Dargitz said, “to be with your family and everything’s great instead of being in your condo alone.”
Hills is survived by son Rick, 50; daughter Connie, 47, and four grandsons.
A memorial service is scheduled Friday, Jan. 12, at 9 a.m., at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, 1800 Cabrillo Memorial Drive. A celebration of Hills’ life will follow at 10 a.m. at the Red Sails Inn, 2614 Shelter Island Drive.