Bio

Faulkner came out of San Dieguito High School to star at Palomar as a basketball guard (as a freshman under coach Joe Brennan and a sophomore under Andy Gilmour) and in football as a J.C. Grid-Wire All-American honorable mention safety (under coach Mack Wiebe). Faulkner went on to play for UC Santa Barbara under former Stanford and Utah coach Jack Curtis in the Gauchos' final season of Division I football in 1969. Faulkner had a strong junior season but the schedule included back-to-back "body bag" road games vs. Nebraska and Tennessee on successive Saturdays, and UCSB dropped football after the season. Left without a team to play for as a senior, Faulkner earned a Bachelor's degree in biology from UCSB and received a Master's (in taxonomy, the classification of insects) from California State University Long Beach. For four decades, he has been an internationally-recognized, court-certified forensic entomologist testifying as an expert witness in high-profile murder cases throughout the United States. Faulkner is a research associate at the San Diego Natural History Museum and is a frequent contributor to scientific journals.