Emily Paine Carter

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Judd Poindexter is a study in how one thing leads to another.

Poindexter, 32, is the owner of Big Fun Events, a wide-ranging entertainment company that continues to grow through word of mouth, he said.

On a recent weekend Poindexter was among the disc jockeys at the SCION College Winter Break at Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia. Getting to introduce DJ Jazzy Jeff to the student crowd sounded like a pretty good gig.

In fact, all of Poindexter's gigs sound like pretty good, "big fun" jobs. And having a vintage antique fire engine parked next to one's home -- as he does -- blares the message that an interesting person lives there.

Poindexter is a lifelong Salem resident (four years in Glenvar, he clarified). He, his wife, Amber, their daughter, Evan, 18 months, and his stepdaughter, Madison, 9, live just three streets from the house in which he grew up. (His mother, Connie Poindexter, died a few months ago; father Dale Poindexter and stepmom Patsy live in Roanoke.)

The 1992 Salem High graduate attended Virginia Western Community College for several years, then the College of Health Sciences for one year. In an e-mail he stated that he never quite knew what he wanted to do while he was in school, so he "simply stopped going."

But other opportunities -- however casual they seemed at the time -- were coming into play: Poindexter said that his neighbor Chris Conner offered him a DJ job for one night at the Skate Center of the Roanoke Valley. Before he knew it, 16-year-old Poindexter was working there regularly. "I was a skater every Friday and Saturday night anyway, so why not be there with my friends and get paid for it?" he wrote.

At 18, Poindexter talked with Martinsville "mobile DJ" Larry Decker at a job where Decker was performing. A few weeks later Poindexter DJ'd his first mobile job, a homecoming dance. That parlayed into three to four bookings a month -- and the purchase of his own equipment.

Then Perry Calligan of King's Entertainment Agency called Poindexter to DJ the Salem High after-prom party. Poindexter signed on with the professional agent, a move that more than doubled his bookings, he said.

By 1997, Poindexter was working three to five nights a week, which left his days free for hobbies and travel.

And then at a nightclub and bar show he saw a mechanical surfboard: the next new thing set to replace those mechanical bulls of the 1970s and '80s. "I had to have one," he said. He figured that he could buy stuff he liked, rent it out and justify spending the money.

Stuff such as: inflatable games, a Velcro wall, sumo suits, slides, moon bounces, a climbing wall, etc.

And a 1940 Diamond T fire truck, an eBay find in western Kentucky. On the ride back to Virginia he tallied four minor breakdowns, several stops at Advance Auto stores and 500 miles of sitting on a scrap piece of 2-by-10 lumber -- thanks to its then-lack of a seat. He spent three weeks in "great friend" Chris Pugh's driveway and garage sanding, cutting, grinding, welding, modifying and fabricating things for the truck, just in time to use it for a company picnic booking.

The fire truck is not show-car quality, said Poindexter, so any "scratches from kids climbing in, over and around" the truck don't bother him a bit: "It's supposed to be fun," he said. He uses it to drive "birthday party kids" to the ice cream parlor. He also enjoys driving it on "cruise night" in July; Poindexter said that brother-in-law Danny Elmore takes even more pride in it than he does.

Poindexter also does some "clown work": balloon sculpting, face-painting and stilt-walking. Then there's that five-night-a-week DJ job at Snowshoe.

Although he said that he has to give up many weekends away from family, Poindexter wrote that he appreciates the travel, fascinating people and flexibility of his Big Fun job. Spare time is spent remodeling his and Amber's 106-year-old home, paragliding or snow skiing.

"Something I tell people is 'success is when you don't know whether you're working or playing,' " Poindexter wrote -- which qualifies him as a successful young man.