Emily Paine Carter

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A gracious message was e-mailed to this paper’s news tips : “Please consider my brother Paolo deGuzman” for a “ 'hometown-kid-doing-well’ story … In addition to being a very talented digital artist, he’s just one heckuva wonderful human being.”

Gerard deGuzman, 46, a Roanoke occupational medicine physician , did not have to labor to convince me. I remembered Paolo, and, in a weird coincidence, recalled Gerard from my 1974 terrifying, Massachusetts high school student-teaching days.

Paolo’s credentials should convince you, too. Surely you’ve seen some of his movie and TV work. Say, “Titanic,” his first project?

Or “What Dreams May Come” (amazing art!), “Lake Placid,” “Fight Club,” “The Fifth Element.” At Disney’s Secret Laboratory : “The Kid,” “Reign of Fire,” and “Soarin’ over California.”

And don’t forget those Budweiser lizard commercials.

Paolo, 38, wrote in an e-mail that he now has his “dream job” at DreamWorks Animation. Think “Shark Tale,” “Flushed Away,” “Over the Hedge” and Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming “Bee Movie.” In our cyber-chat Paolo said he was in “crunch mode,” trying to get “Bee’s” trailer out.

Gerard’s e-mails “painted in” some of Paolo’s background: Everywhere, someone knows “my 'little brother.’ ” Both Paolo and their brother Ted, 44, live in Los Angeles; sister Maria died in 1999. Their parents still live in Salem, where the family moved in 1977. Their father, Dr. Placido deGuzman, is a Lewis-Gale Physicians radiologist; their mother, Vita deGuzman, anticipates reading about her “baby.”

Gerard also recalled “The Stereotype,” Paulo’s “notorious” teen band with J.P. Powell and Hunter Wiley.

Paolo, a 1987 Salem High School graduate, wrote that he “absolutely” credits two teachers for encouraging his artistic goals: former SHS art teacher Dave Petersen and now-retired English teacher Walter Robinson.

Instead of reading Dante’s “Inferno” during Robinson’s class, Paolo was inspired by its vivid imagery to draw “crazy demons in a hellish environment.” But, he admitted in an e-mail, Walter secretly loved those “very interesting” drawings. Now Paolo doodles in meetings.

Paolo learned art and design fundamentals at Virginia Commonwealth University (bachelor’s degree in fine arts , 1993), but wrote that “everything else” about visual effects and animation was gained on the job.

He is a “surfacer”: the film arrives totally gray, so texture painters give it life via computer. He virtually paints in hair, sparkling scales, wrinkles, etc.

Although he likes L.A.’s “mind-boggling” number of top entertainment acts and restaurants, he misses our easy commutes and changing seasons — even snow! He especially misses so many good Salem friends — and all of our “kind, friendly” people. He comes home at least yearly.

Mercy me, he’s even humble: “Thanks for giving me a little confidence-booster. … It sure is nice to know that you’re not completely forgotten,” Paolo wrote. And, with “such a passion for art [and] a great love for movies … to have both in my life is truly a blessing. It’s almost unfair to call this a job.”

As wise elder Billy Branson of Salem says, “If you find a job you truly enjoy, you’ll never 'work’ a day in your life.”

Editor’s note: The concert to benefit Jimmy and Joe Gladden will be 9 p.m. Saturday at Awful Arthur’s in Salem. Because of an editing error, the date was incorrect in last week’s “Front Porch” column.