A Phoenix engineer leads a secret life as a freelance clairvoyant

By Beth Cochran

I want to be able to spread the message about finding your own truth and being the person you can be.

Mark Salazar and J.C. Gobins sit directly across from each other in plush purple chairs in Mark’s living room. It is a Sunday in March. The living room is illuminated by two skylights and three large windows that reveal the base of the mountain near Mark’s north Glendale home. Mark, tall and tan, sits up straight, his feet planted firmly on the ground. His thin, rectangular glasses sit on a wooden coffee table next to him. His eyes are shut, but he looks as though he is peering up into his forehead.

“So J.C. in order to do this your going to have to tell me the full name given to you on your birthday,” Mark says.

“John Charles Gobins, Jr.,” J.C. says clearly.

J.C. is a real estate agent who went to Mark in search of answers.

“Okay we’re lookin’ at you and you’re a … it’s kinda funny. It’s like a combination of silver-green … green-silver. What kind of color is that? It’s like a shiny green. Like a metallic green … let’s call it that. Like they used to make the old AMC Gremlins.”

“Nasty. So you basically see some nasty colors?”

“It’s not bad. At least I don’t see black. Then you would be near death. John Charles what’s on your mind? What’s the first question … what do we want to look at?”

Mark is reading J.C.’s aura.

Mark is a passionate freelance clairvoyant. He calls himself a spiritual teacher, psychic reader, energy healer. He practices his art in his spare time, which to him is not enough, because he is an engineer who works for an aviation communications company. And tomorrow morning … Monday morning, he will return to his regular 10-hour-a-day job.

He is a man divided. He is a 42-year-old father of two daughters and a husband. He needs to feed his family and pay the mortgage, so he’s torn between clairvoyance, his passion, and engineering, a means of supporting his family.

Mark’s interest in his psychic ability isn’t all that unusual. According to a recent National Science Foundation Survey, 60 percent of Americans believe that people can have what Mark claims to have—extra sensory perception. The psychic industry in America reaps $1.4 billion annually, but Mark will have to figure out how to cash in on the spiritual boom before he can quit his day job. He makes $30 for each half-hour reading.

Photo by Beth Cochran
Despite his busy schedule, the clairvoyant father spends time with his daughters, Camellia (left) and Emily.

Energy forces
“I’d like to do more in this area,” Mark says. “But I gotta make money. At some point I want to do this full time. I want to be able to teach. I want to be able to spread the message about finding your own truth and being the person you can be. I think everybody should have the opportunity to achieve their life’s purpose,” he says.

This is partly because it took him so long to find his own purpose. Before Mark became a freelance clairvoyant, he was directionless. He grew up in Southern California. Math and science were always strong points for him, so he pursued a degree in engineering at the University of California at Irvine. He graduated and became a certified engineer. But he didn’t really want to be an engineer.

Nevertheless, one year later he took a job with McDonnell Douglas, which was moving its facility from Los Angeles to Mesa. So Mark, ready for a change, moved to Arizona. For nearly four years he worked for McDonnell Douglas, then found a new job as an engineer at Honeywell. But he wasn’t being fulfilled.

Searching for answers, he attended a Phoenix psychic fair. A clairvoyant told him that no matter what he did he would land on his feet. So he started taking guitar lessons—something he had wanted to do for a long time. He did this every day after work for almost four months.

Meanwhile a love was developing between Mark and a petite, Italian woman at work named Lisa Cannizarro. By the time they went on their first date, Mark had already decided to quit his $40,000 a year engineering job and move to San Francisco to become a musician.

Mark left.

Lisa stayed.

And they had a long-distance relationship for a year, flying back and forth once a month.

Lisa bought a home in Arizona, Mark worked at a recording studio in San Francisco. He also wrote and recorded some of his own alternative folk rock songs.

Mark calls his music sojourn in San Francisco his “sabbatical.” During his sabbatical, he took meditation and energy healing classes at the Berkeley Psychic Institute after learning about the school in a magazine called Psychic Reader.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I moved out there, because I felt like I just had to get away from the energies that were here and pushing me in a certain direction. Energies saying you need to work, you need to find a wife, you need to get a family, you need to buy a house,” he says.

“We never missed a beat.”

After a year of long distance dating, in 1995, Lisa sold her house, quit her job of 14 years and moved to California to be with Mark. So Mark began venturing back to the straight track.

“Lisa moved out there. Then it was like okay I gotta find a real job.”

“I supported us for a while,” Lisa says as she flips through a recipe book on their kitchen island counter.

“You did. She did. Lisa got a job right away. She moved out there and I was still looking for a job. And here was this conflict: I don’t want to be an engineer. I don’t want to go back into engineering work.”

Photo by Beth Cochran
Lisa and Mark team up to help people get in touch with their desires and their futures.

Mark got a job at a company that manufactured music equipment. He was employee number six. He worked in technical support writing instruction manuals and answering consumer questions.

Mark and Lisa married and bought their first house. One month after buying the house he was laid off from the music equipment company.

But the couple has learned to trust that things will work out. And they did.

“Somebody called me back. They said ‘We’d like you to come for an interview,’ I said, ‘Okay where’s the company at.’ ‘We’re here at Parker & Ninth street. And I’m here at my job goin’ ‘Yeah I’m at Parker & Ninth street.’ So I hang up the phone and I walk to the window and it was right there across the street.”

“How’s that for your spirit guides workin’ and helpin’ you out,” Mark says.

“I got paid from this other one until March 31 and started this one April 4 or 5.”

“Isn’t that funny how those dates work?” he says to his wife across the kitchen.

“Oh, I didn’t realize that. Everything was always February, March, April for us,” she says.

I think everybody should have the opportunity to achieve their life’s purpose.

“All the changes in our life happened around that time period. Both of our girls were born in March. We bought our house in February,” Mark says. The couple has two daughters, Emily and Cammy.

“We got engaged in February. Our first date was in February,” Lisa adds.

Their ability to trust that everything would work out was put to the test once again. Lisa stopped working in customer service sales, after seeing how quickly Emily, was growing up. Their second daughter Camellia, Cammy for short, came along two years later.

“If we have to eat beans and rice for a few years we’ll do it,” says Lisa. But when Lisa’s maternity leave ran out Mark got a promotion.

Everything was falling into place.

“We never missed a beat,” she says.

The critics
Meanwhile Mark enrolled in a clairvoyant training program at a school in Walnut Creek, California called Intuitive Way. In a year’s time he had completed his training.

Lisa told some people about Mark’s ability, which catapulted him into doing readings.

“I’ve always been really supportive, because I know how gifted he is.”

Not everyone was as supportive as Lisa.

“There were a few friends I could tell what Mark did on the side. I even have some close friends that are skeptical, but they’ve accepted it,” Lisa says.

Lisa’s mom has her doubts, but still asks Mark to use his energy healing abilities on her arthritis.

Photo by Kelley Karnes
Mark gets animated during a reading in his North Glendale home.

“For her being a devout Catholic that was a big deal. I think she’s still skeptical, but on the same token she sees that it works for us. Overall we’ve gotten really loving responses from most people,” Lisa says.

Lisa continued to lead her mom’s Catholic Church group, but also supported what Mark was doing. One time Mark even led the group through a meditation at their house.

Mark and Lisa were raised Catholic. Mark went to Catholic school for twelve years. They were married Catholic and baptized both of their children Catholic.

“It was more out of respect for my parents and his parents to do it than anything and it was tradition, but eventually somebody has to break the tradition when you don’t really believe in your heart it’s the right thing. Unfortunately we’re the pioneers in our family. As long as we support each other then we’re okay,” Lisa says.

Mark and Lisa stopped practicing Catholicism two years ago. Mark says his family didn’t mind his decision, but Lisa’s struggled. She didn’t want to break her mom’s heart.

“The whole Italian Catholic guilt thing … oyy” Lisa says flipping her hand forward in the Italian-fah-getta-bought-it fashion.

“It’s taken eight years of struggling back and forth … what to do, with the kids and everything.”

“I wish I knew this stuff in college.”

Meanwhile Lisa was feeling torn in another area of her life. The couple loved the Bay Area, but it was hard raising their children without any family around, especially on birthdays and holidays. Lisa wanted to return to Arizona.

Mark says he wasn’t too keen on moving at first. He was making over $100,000 a year and thought he would be there for a long time. He meditated, something he does daily, particularly when he’s faced with tough decisions. He could see a future in Arizona working out, but knew he had to hold on to his job, because he didn’t see immediate opportunities in Arizona. So, Mark told his boss he would like to work part time from home, but he didn’t mention that the home would be in Arizona.

One night Mark had a dream where he was faced with a tiger. Fear and anxiety stared him in the face. “I said you know what I’m not afraid of you tiger and he came up to me and I pet him.”

Shortly after that dream he went on a business trip to Singapore with his boss. Ironically Singapore means Tiger Port and he says tigers are a main theme there. He knew he had to face the tiger again and come clean with his boss.

“We were in the taxi back to the airport and I said oh, by the way I’ve moved to Arizona,” he says.

For a year and a half, Mark commuted from his 3000 square foot home in Arizona to his job in San Francisco. But he knew it was going to come to an end at some point.

“I can’t just quit, because if I don’t have another job to step into then I’ve got no money. I don’t have time to find another job, because I’m too busy commuting back and forth. So I’m kind of stuck,” he recalls.

Mark visualized the best possible scenario and believes he made it happen.

“Best scenario would be if they laid me off and gave me severance pay for eight weeks. That gives me eight weeks to find a new job.”

Last January Mark was in his office when his boss came in and said, “Mark I’ve got some news for you. And I go ‘Yeah I’m going to get laid off.’ It made it really easy for him.’’

Mark believes that by communicating with his spirit guides he created this scenario. Mark can always feel a spirit’s presence and on occasion he sees them. He says he communicates in his mind, like prayer. He says clairvoyance helps him to be more efficient at work, but he doesn’t tell co-workers about his ability.

“Right now my ability helps me at work. I can know is this guy telling the truth or is he lying or does he have another agenda. I look at their energy. If everybody knows I can do that then people would try to avoid me. I don’t want to have that impact at work.”

He says he also can look at the energy of a business opportunity and see if it’s something he should pursue or if it’s something that’s just going to waste his time.

“I wish I knew this stuff in college.”

The school of enlightenment
Recently Mark took a step forward in his clairvoyant dream and Lisa played a huge role when she introduced him to a woman named Tina Sacchi. Lisa and Tina met at a girls’ only Bunko night. Tina shared Mark’s passion for spiritual healing.

In 2004 Mark and Tina started the School Of Enlightenment in Glendale. Mark’s specialty is psychic development and Tina’s is Reiki energy healing. But Mark knows that he still has to make money, so he can’t give up the engineering career.

I’ll just keep working at it and working at it. Other opportunities will come from it.

Lisa even found interest in this area. She began making necklaces, anklets to coincide with Mark’s passion. “I create pieces with different colors that would bring different things into the person’s life, like peace or tranquillity.”

Still, they try to lead an ordinary life, even if they are spiritualists. Lisa is on the PTSA board at their elementary school, she also volunteers in the school library every week.

“We do the soccer thing, the dance thing, we’ve done the karate thing, then when I get a chance I do the jewelry,” Lisa says.

On a Friday in mid-March Mark had the day off from his engineering job, so he took the opportunity to schedule another psychic reading in the morning. His two girls were sitting at the kitchen island eating bacon and syrup, swishing their legs back and forth as they watched cartoons on the big screen television across the room. Both have long, dark, wavy hair. Cammy is dressed in pink, one of her favorite colors. Mark was at their round, wooden kitchen table writing in his journal. Before the reading he meditated in their backyard. While he was out there his girls came outside and said “meditate me.” That’s what the girls call it.

“Cammy says ‘What color am I?’ So we sat out there and we did a little meditation.”

The couple wants to show their children, Emily, 8, and Cammy, 6, different sides of spirituality. They talk to their children about their beliefs, and also that everybody interprets the Bible differently. On occasion they go to a non-denominational church.

“I know that’s going to be a big challenge as they start going through school. I don’t want people to look at them like they are weird, but I also want them to be true to who they are and who we are. We’re just all about teaching them to be good kids and about good karma and bad karma,” Lisa says.

“Things happen in steps”
It is the beginning of April and today is the first day of Mark’s Psychic Development Program. A day he’s been waiting and preparing for since they opened the school in January 2004. The goal of the program is to get people in touch with themselves and their clairvoyant abilities. Students pay $220 for the three month long program in which they do workshops, meditations and psychic readings.

The class went smooth and seven people attended, which he feels is a good number for the opening day.

“This is one of those things I’m learning in life. For me life is about steps. Things happen in steps. Incrementally. It’s a process. So, I’m kinda learning to deal with that and be patient.”

“I’ll just keep working at it and working at it. Other opportunities will come from it. I understand I need to be home when the kids are young and it’s fun being around them,” he says with a smile as he looks at Cammy who just ran into the kitchen brushing her bangs away from her face.

Back to top

The Devil’s Tale showcases the coursework of individual students at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University.