The Average Guy was the donor who counseled troubled kids. He had been a sperm donor in his home state then moved to Alaska. He wanted to keep donating but couldn't find a bank nearby. He researched and found that the repository was the only U.S. sperm bank that allowed donors to contribute from their own homes. (Donors could ship the samples to California in liquid nitrogen tanks.)

"I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if I could be a Nobel sperm donor?' " he says. The Average Guy called the repository to offer his services. He managed to persuade Graham he had the intellectual chops: "I told Graham that I had gotten 800 on the math section of the GRE, that my uncle had worked on the moon project, that several ancestors had been presidential appointees, that a great-uncle had finished third in the Indianapolis 500. It was a sales job."

The Average Guy became perhaps the most diligent of Graham's men, fathering at least a dozen and perhaps as many as 17 kids in the early '90s. His enthusiasm once put him in an awkward spot. The Average Guy carefully observed the rules for handling semen samples at home. The repository instructed home donors to place samples in their freezer to cool them down slowly, and only transfer them to liquid nitrogen after that pre-icing. Says Average Guy:

I was moving from one apartment to another down the hall, and I was in the middle of processing specimens. They were in the freezer of my old apartment. I wanted to make sure the electricity was hooked up in the new apartment so that the freezer would be working when I transferred the samples. I called the power company, and I didn't want to explain too much, so I told them that I had "human specimens" in my freezer and wanted to make sure they were not damaged when I moved. The power company lady seemed taken aback, but she was very nice and confirmed that the power was on. I hung up.

Ten minutes later the police were at my door. The officer wanted to come in and check the freezer to see that I didn't have body parts in it. I explained that the "human specimens" were sperm donations. It was very embarrassing.