Article in Chicago Social Magazine, October 2001 issue
By Daniel Trantham
The Buzz - Services
At your Service - Richard Misch is just the butler you've been meaning to hire
When Trace Schmelz and his fiancee moved to Chicago last summer to take positions with high-profile law firms, they hit the ground billing hours. So many that they still hadn't hung pictures in their freshly painted Streeterville apartment months later, when Schmeltz's future in-laws called to say they would be coming to stay with them for the weekend. Unsure of the whereabouts of his toolbox or the nearest hardware store, Schmelz needed help fast. So he called Richard Misch, founder of In
APinch, Inc., and the 38-year-old modern-day butler-for-hire showed up at his door - the night before the parent's arrival, no less - prepared to save the day. Within a couple of hours, light fixtures, mirrors and pictures were securely in place.
A sparely built man raised in Park Ridge, Misch sports Timberland boots, drives a Jeep, and drinks Amoco Station coffee from a stainless-steel Goop Grip mug. Operating InAPinch, Inc. out of his Bucktown apartment, he provides an endless range of services, from moving and running errands, to taking care of light household maintenance and repair jobs (for more involved tasks, such as electrical work, carpentry and roofing, Misch will find reliable help). A day's work might entail unclogging the gutters of a home in Lakeview, taking a golden retriever to the vet, locating a body shop that restores vintage Jaguars, and supervising the delivery and installation of a new refrigerator.
Misch's route to his current job was circuitous to say the least. He worked on an offshore oil rig for two-and-a-half years in the Gulf of Mexico, served as a diesel engineer and data analyst in the Navy, and eventually earned a degree in accounting and marketing from the University of Pennsylvania, financing his way through school tending bar. He moved to the Chicago area after landing a job at a small accounting firm in Skokie--and there, at his desk on Monday morning back in August of 1993, the seed for InAPinch, Inc. was planted
<continued on second page>
