Mark Jason, a beloved father, grandfather, brother, uncle, friend, mentor and more than 45-year resident of Malibu, whose gusto for adventure animated those around him, died Jan. 8 at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He was 80.
Mark was born on March 19, 1939, in Los Angeles to William and Selena Jason. He attended Carthay Center Grammar School, John Burroughs Junior High School and Los Angeles High School, leaving after his freshman year to move with his family to Mexico. He continued high school in Mexico City and later at the American School in Guadalajara.
Mark returned to the United States with a passion for ranching and studied animal husbandry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, but an allergy to animals led him to switch to accounting.
After graduating in 1965, he decided “on a lark,” as he put it, to become a special agent for the law enforcement arm of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles, where he investigated tax evasion and other white-collar crimes. He left to become a budget analyst for the California State University system. After five years, he started a new career in real estate, first as an agent and broker and later as the founder of the Real Estate Digest, a publication that provided detailed information on real estate listings in Los Angeles—unprecedented in the pre-internet era. The digest became a must-have resource within the industry. Mark sold the publication in 1982 to focus on real estate development.
“On a sunny day in 1975, Mark skipped work to spend the day at the beach,” a loved on recalled. “As he was crossing Pacific Coast Highway, book in hand, he saw a radiologist named Roselyn (Roz) Richman who was also playing hooky, also with a book in hand. She would become the love of his life and mother of his child; they were married from 1980 until her death in 2011.”
Outside of work, Mark enjoyed traveling, birdwatching, scuba diving, cooking, music (he played guitar and sang in a group called The Cumbersome Trio) and coaching his son’s Little League baseball teams. He visited China with Roz immediately following the Cultural Revolution and dove for abalone in the waters around the Channel Islands off Southern California, among many other adventures. Mark spearheaded an enterprise to cultivate and import honeydew melons from Mexico. For the past 10 years, Mark combined his interests from throughout his life to pursue a compromise plan for immigration reform, creating the Immigrant Tax Inquiry Group.
Mark is survived by his son, Will, daughter-in-law, Kim, granddaughters, Molly and Lucy, sister, Ann, brother-in-law, Ted, brother, Rob, sister-in-law, Montse, and six nieces and nephews: Katie, Tom, Michael, Lisa, Greg, and Andrea, in addition to many friends. His family and friends will celebrate his life with a private memorial.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Mark’s memory to the American Kidney Fund at kidneyfund.org.