Guardian Alarm founder Milton Pierce (center) celebrates his 90th birthday with sons, and Guardian co-owners, Richard Pierce (left) and Douglas Pierce (right).

 Finding a job during the 1930’s especially for a teenager was virtually impossible. The odds of starting a business during the Depression were even longer. But Milton Pierce beat those odds. After his father’s tailor shop at Cass and Peterboro experienced a break-in, Milton designed and installed a burglar alarm.

“For some reason the thing always fascinated me, I don’t know why. “What makes it work”? Fifteen years old. So I would sit and take the box apart quietly and look at it and play with it and never did figure out all of it, but I got enough of a smattering where I could make one myself work. And then one day my brother read an ad in the paper that someone wanted an ‘alarm man’. So I went over to the man, it was called Detroit Burglar Alarm Co., and he put me through tests that I can’t believe that I ever passed. So he hired me.”

Milton worked after school for $2 a day, often for 12 hour shifts. When business lagged, however, a lay-off notice arrived. But the word got around about Milton’s skills; before long he had dozens of customers, each paying $3 a month for his services.

“I would put on, I think, a new alarm about once a month. And then it grew over the months, I’d say to about 40, 30, 50 alarms and I was as happy as a lark, I remember. I rode my motorcycle. In fact one of the customers I picked up was the Detroit Yacht Club. I got one room in there where they kept the beverages. So when they called for service, it was just great; I’d get on the motorcycle put the batteries in the saddlebag and ride over and spend the rest of the day snoozing on the Island. I never really thought I worked very hard no matter what I did. I always enjoyed it.”

And then began an acquisition spree that would take Milton Pierce from three dozen customers to more than 80,000 over the next seven decades. He bought a company called Guardian Alarm, bartering his time for the sale price.

“You be my service man and instead of paying you, I’ll apply that to whatever cash you have and that will be the down payment. And that worked along fine. So I remember going to his lawyer’s office, I didn’t have a lawyer but he did, and he wrote quite a contract. And it wasn’t until about maybe a year or two later that I realized what I had signed. The conditions were that I had to make payments once a week. And if I missed a payment there was a reload penalty, which I didn’t realize. I also had to forfeit the 40 alarms I had. Now he only had 150 or 160 at the time himself. So that would have been a great increase for him, and that’s secretly I think what they hoped for, that I’d never make the payment. But I didn’t have any expenses; I lived at home. My mother answered the telephone, so whatever I took in I just gave to him, and it was fine. So I did succeed in getting it paid off and that worked just great. That was the first one.”

“My friends used to kid me I ought to go on “What’s My Line” because nobody would ever guess what you do. It was that rare of a thing. And there were practically no alarms in residences, only a very few. I don’t think they were wealthy, I think more or less they were kind of shady characters that had alarms at that time. As I remember walking into a couple of them where they walk back and forth with suitcases, and I knew that it was cash. But they were all commercial stores and most of them were in bad neighborhoods, considered bad.”

Today the Chairman of the Board of Guardian Security Services oversees a company with more than 80,000 customers in four states and Canada. Over the years he and his sons have steered the company into new areas: a guard service in 1970 and armored security 10 years later. Its newest venture is medical monitoring.

“I never cared for anything except the alarms, I didn’t care for the guard business or the rest of it, but you get into what you get into that’s all. So the medical monitoring business is really an interesting thing and it really fills a need for people. When you figure the difference in cost of having a person constantly attending someone ill, as opposed to having electronic equipment that will monitor them, either with television or sound or a button that you can push for help, it’s a great saving primarily for the government, I think, because they pay for a lot of that themselves through hospitals. We have a fairly good size business in that too now.”

When he isn’t keeping tabs on the company, Milton Pierce, age 90, rides motorcycles and flies his plane. He got his pilot’s license at the age of 77.

“This instructor was real, real good and so one day he came to me and said, “Milton” he said if I had the money I would buy a small plane and I could be an instructor and make some money. And I know where there’s a plane that’s a great buy but I don’t have the cash but if you give me the money I’ll go buy the plane and then I’ll bring it back and I’ll get a mortgage on the plane and pay you back. OK. I gave him the money, went to the bank and lo and behold he had a bankruptcy at one time. Consequently, no loan, so one day he comes and says, “Milton, how would you like to learn how to fly”? I said I don’t want to learn to fly. “Milton, how would you like to learn how to fly”? And this came through so that’s how I got paid back! How I learned to fly.”

Milton Pierce, Chairman of Guardian Security Services.