Departments 
LAUGHLIN – Not many kids are rewarded with explosives for mowing the lawn. But the pyrotechnician for Laughlin’s Rockets Over the River learned early the value of combustibility.
“My neighbor owned a pyrotechnic business,” said Ryan Foster, founder of Las Vegas based High Desert Pyrotechnics Inc. “I’d mow his lawn or do odd jobs for him and he’d pay me in firecrackers. I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood. By the time I was 14, I was packaging fireworks and working a stand.”
Making the move from detonating munitions to bagging groceries wasn’t a likely transition for the lively teenager from Sandy, Utah. Foster had found his niche and by the age of 20, was a licensed lead pyro, directing shows across the country.
“I worked my way up the food chain,” Foster said of his early years as a pyrotechnician. “Who doesn’t want to get paid to blow things up?”
In 2005, Foster set off on his own, determined to build a business where integrity was the first ingredient in his shows.
“I’d worked with a lot of companies that promised something but didn’t necessarily deliver the goods,” Foster said. “There’s a trend in this business that is all about numbers on paper. I was watching these shows, counting what was being put in the air and knew the client was getting ripped off. For what people were spending, I knew I could put on a hell of a better show.”
