Things Go Better With Koch

Chief of Retail Dane Koch’s 35 years in merchandising was a great match for DAP Health, but it also introduced him to a world of good, and he’s thankful.

Words by Kay Kudukis

“I was born in 29 Palms,” says DAP Health Chief of Retail Dane Koch (pronounced like Diet Coke). “My dad was a Marine, and in ’62, he got orders to Vietnam.”

This was Dad’s second stint in the Marines. The first was in WWII, with his valor having been recognized with a Silver Star. After the war, he went to college, and met and married Koch’s mom. They had Koch’s older brother in 1950, and Koch’s dad reenlisted, often leaving Mom home to work and raise their first son alone. She wasn’t doing it again with a one-year-old. “She made him retire,” Koch says, “which was probably very painful for him, because my dad was pretty sure he invented the Marine Corps.”

Dad loved bowling, and managed the Yucca Valley Lanes, but in the end, he loved the Marines more — seven months later, he took a civilian job with them in San Diego. Mom worked too, eventually becoming an office manager for McMahon Furniture.

Eleven years after that first kid, Koch came along, and life was good. He went to elementary school in San Diego’s University City, where he met his best bud Eric, who was Jewish. It was Koch’s first exposure to culture outside his own Baptist upbringing. “We were great friends until my mom and I moved to North County.” That was in 1973, when his parents ended their 27-year marriage.

High school in Escondido was a blast. Koch joined both the French club and the art club, and won the heart of the head counselor’s daughter, a cheerleader. “I was very popular. I got along with everybody,” he recalls. “In my senior year, I was voted Best Dressed, and I was so skinny that for our picture, the girl voted Best Dressed and I exchanged clothes.”

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~ Carl Jung

Fresh out of high school, Koch moved to his dad and stepmom’s home in San Francisco, and enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), where he was assigned to a work program at the largest Montgomery Ward store in the chain. An associate took a fancy to him and showed him around town. Koch had never been exposed to gay culture, and it scared him so much that he escaped back to San Diego, enrolled in Palomar College, found some friends in a fundamental evangelical church, and hid inside it.

Montgomery Ward hired him in San Diego, and when he wasn’t working or praying the gay away, he attended San Diego State University with plans to teach. But instead of teaching, he stayed with the retail brand, holding many senior positions within operations and merchandising. “I am the operations and merchandise person I am today because of my time there,” Koch conveys. “I worked for some incredibly great, super smart people.”

He also — quietly — started dating a guy.

“He took me to San Francisco, to all these places that I would have never gone — the Castro district, Polk Gulch.” It was 1984, the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and Koch painfully recalls people blotched with lesions wasting away in doorways. “I didn’t know what it was and couldn't understand why nobody was helping them. I didn’t know what AIDS was, I had no idea. I didn't know anything.”

He went back into hiding.

By 28, he was verging on a nervous breakdown, but received an epiphany instead: Why had God created him if it was wrong? He realized he hadn’t decided to be who he is. He just was. And he told himself it was OK.

His stepmom and dad had divorced, but she and Koch were close. When he came out to her, she already knew, and told him everything was gonna be fine. “It was like 5,000 pounds just came off,” he says.

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.” ~ Socrates

Koch’s future husband Eric worked at Montgomery Ward too, but they started dating anyway. That was in 1990, the same year Koch’s dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “Eric was just so instrumental in getting me through that,” he says. Koch didn’t come out to his father during those last six months, but he did introduce him to the man he loved, and Dad loved Eric too.

Koch left Montgomery Ward for a position as store manager at Marshalls in Costa Mesa. His boss left a year later to work for the arts and crafts store chain Michaels, and asked Koch to join him. He stayed for 17 years, rising to district manager.

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” ~ Unknown

In 2003, the couple sold their place in San Diego and moved to their Palm Springs vacation home. In 2006, Michaels was purchased by private equity, and two years later, a dissatisfied Koch told corporate, “The changes are bad. We don’t treat our people well. The expectation is ridiculous, and we’re killing everybody. You guys have made this company not worth working for.” They didn’t like that. He took a medical leave and never went back.

Koch purchased an interior design company in Minnesota with a friend, but the economy was struggling, and flying back and forth was grueling. In 2012, Eric saw an ad for a retail assistant at Revivals. Although his work experience was much senior to the position, Koch applied, admitting he’d been so insulated that, “What I knew about the AIDS crisis and DAP Health could fit on the head of a pin.” But once hired, Koch’s purpose found him.

“After 35 years in another industry, I was actually coming to work and going home at night feeling good about what I did that day,” he says, smiling, “because whatever my small part is, somebody benefited from it.”

When his boss retired, Koch rose to director of retail operations, and in 2024 was promoted to chief of retail. His commitment to the organization and its values has him beating his own drum.

“Everybody has a right to have a place to live, the right to have a meal, the right to health care,” Koch says, hammering it home with: “This is the best agency I believe I can be involved with to help make that happen.” And if you ask Koch, he’ll tell you Teddy Roosevelt summed it up succinctly: “The best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”