Richard K. Tompkins, a Denver native who became one of the early "movers and shakers" in the ski world is being inducted as the Pioneer. In 1937, he and Clark Blickensderfer founded The Ski Shop, Denver's first store specializing in the needs of devotees of the infant sport. Dick was also a member of the Colorado ski team, one of the founders of the Zipfelberger Club, and an active promoter of Colorado skiing through frequent articles in Woods Wind, a Denver ski publication. The Ski Shop was closed in 1942 because of World War II and Dick's induction into the Air Force.

In 1945 Dick, his wife Lillian, and their young son Dick, Jr. moved to Mexico City where he began a career in the film industry, initially with RKO, then as General manager of one of the major motion picture studios in Mexico, Latin America, and the USA.

In 1975, he sold his interest in the Mexico City studios and moved to Cozumel, Mexico where he owned and managed a scuba diving shop, Aqua Safari, until his retirement in 1990. As Dick said prior to his death in December 1996, his life seemed to have come full circle, albeit in different sports: "Running a ski shop and a dive shop are surprisingly similar and the kinds of people that you meet scuba diving are as genuine, honest, and caring as were all out friends form the early skiing days in Colorado."