Stargate co-founder found dead

Marcus Ruscitto had a lust for life from the time he was a boy until his untimely death this week, friends of the internet entrepreneur said Friday.

"He had no fear. He was a risk taker. He liked to be at the top of the business world. He liked to take things to the limit. He would just excel in everything that he would do," said his girlfriend of three years, Debra Vensak, 26, of Banksville. "He was just so extreme ... He would just take ideas to places that people never took them before."

Ruscitto, 34, co-founder of Internet service provider Stargate.net Inc., was found dead shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday in his Shaler home. Police went there in response to a home security alarm.

Allegheny County and Shaler police are investigating the death. The Allegheny County Coroner's Office said there were no signs of foul play, but the cause of Ruscitto's death is pending toxicology test results that will not be available for at least 12 weeks.

Investigators found drug paraphernalia, apparently a syringe, in the Bethany Drive home, according to the coroner's office.

Vensak said she talked with Ruscitto about 10 p.m. Wednesday.

"He was with some friends, having a fun time," she said. "He seemed OK.

"He had a lot of things going for him and a lot of people that cared about him. He wouldn't have done anything intentionally to hurt himself."

Family friend Joe Francis said Ruscitto was a precocious boy. He remembers taking Ruscitto, then 6, out to dinner and telling him to get anything he wanted. He expected the boy to order a hot dog or hamburger.

"He told the waiter, 'I'd like to have oysters bienville,'" Francis recalled. "He had such an exotic appetite."

Ruscitto, a native of Peters, Washington County, began his rise in the tech world in 1994 when he left his job as a money manager at A.G. Edwards to build a business out of his then teen-age brother Michael's hobby of connecting friends to the Internet.

The two started the business with $107,000 from inheritance and personal savings.

"Our first network was racks of equipment next to (Michael's) bed," he said in a 2000 interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "I was laying on my bed one day and told my brother I'd rather be wrong and lose this money five times over than not do it and have been right."

Ruscitto oversaw Stargate's growth into the region's largest locally based Internet service provider. In the late 1990s, Stargate went on a buying spree as it sought to diversify. The company racked up more than $20 million in debt, which weighed heavily in the recession of 2000. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.

Vensak said Ruscitto took the bankruptcy in stride.

"He let everyone know that it was fine," she said. "Maybe it wasn't as fine as we thought, but he dealt with that, and he had a lot of other endeavors that he wanted to do."

In October, three companies bought Stargate in pieces. One of them, Cleveland-based Expedient, moved its headquarters this year to Stargate's former Strip District headquarters, where it employed Ruscitto and about 65 other former Stargate employees.

Ruscitto decided in February to leave Expedient and suggested he would like to get involved in another entrepreneurial activity.

"Marc's associates and friends from the former Stargate and now Expedient are devastated by this news (of his death)," said Jack Horner, owner of Jack Horner Communications, Stargate's longtime public relations firm. "This is a huge loss to this community."

Ruscitto most recently served as interim director of the nonprofit Three Rivers Connect. Mark Kurtzrock, chairman of that group and president of Downtown communications firm Dymun + Co., said Ruscitto volunteered for the post after founding director Ron Gdovic left.

"He did an exceptional job. His drive for results really served the organization well," Kurtzrock said.

Kurtzrock said that despite the enthusiasm he put into the job, Ruscitto was "clearly in the hunt for his next great opportunity."

Francis said it was clear early on that Ruscitto was something special, and his eventual success was no surprise.

"Oh my God, was he bright," Francis said. "Everything he did, he did well."

He said Ruscitto always enjoyed life, whether as a young prankster or as an adult who once had Francis picked up for a golf outing in a helicopter.

"I remember his laughter a lot," Francis said. "He had a special laugh."

Brandon Keat can be reached at bkeat@tribweb.com or (724) 779-7113., Michael Yeomans can be reached at myeomans@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7908.