FORKLIFT DRIVER GETS BIG RAISE – TURNS $11.5M CEO
DRIVEN Ron Vachris has spent four decades rising up the ranks at Costco after getting his start as a teenage forklift operator — and now he’s earning $11.5 million as the company’s new CEO!
Vachris, 58, oversees about 300,000 employees in almost 900 warehouses for his phenomenal salary — but at age 18 he was a regular working stiff pulling in about $3 per hour.
The go-getter was studying business at Arizona’s Glendale Community College when he took a palletmoving position at Price
Club — America’s first major members-only wholesale retailer. But by 1991, he was a general manager for the chain in Denver, Colo.
Two years later, Price Club was acquired by Costco and became part of its nationwide network.
Vachris was promoted to various senior management positions over the years — overseeing business operations in the Northwest and working in real estate development and product merchandising. In 2022, the biz whiz was tapped as Costco’s president and chief operating officer, setting him up as the heir to the company’s second-ever CEO, Craig Jelinek.
After 71-year-old Jelinek announced his retirement, Vachris was tapped to helm the $280 billion company and took over the reins on Jan. 1. According to SEC filings, the big cheese will make a base salary of $1.15 million and receive $10.4 million in Costco shares.
But Vachris isn’t the first staffer to steadily climb the corporate ladder as Jelinek accomplished the feat himself!
Jelinek was hired as a food stocker for FedMart, which was founded by Sol Price — the mogul behind Price Club. At FedMart, he worked with Jim Sinegal, Costco’s co-founder and first CEO. When Sinegal, 88, hung up his hat in 2012, he handed his old job to Jelinek, who more than doubled the company’s revenues during his tenure. “Costco has a very strong culture and a deep bench of management talent,” says Jelinek, who will serve in an advisory capacity until April. “I have total confidence in Ron and feel that we are fortunate as a company to have an executive of his caliber to succeed me.”
BIG-SCREEN heartthrob Ryan Reynolds showed he also has a big heart when he helped shepherd the family of one of his Welsh soccer team’s players through a medical crisis! Laura Forde, wife of Wrexham player Anthony Forde, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor weeks after giving birth to the couple’s first child last year and told she had just months to live.
When the 47-year-old Deadpool star, who bought the team with fellow actor Rob McElhenney in 2020, heard of the couple’s plight, he paid for Laura to see a top neurosurgeon in New York City and get a second opinion. Miraculously, the American doctor found Laura had been misdiagnosed and put her on a life-saving treatment plan. “It’s gone from the worst news possible to the best news possible in a space of a few weeks,” Laura shares. “Obviously, it’s amazing!”