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HOSPITALITY IS IN Richard Cotter's blood. His paternal grandfather ran a restaurant. His father was corporate controller for Howard Johnson and then Sheraton hotels. An older brother, Robert, oversees a division of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., the company that just hired Richard to oversee its flagship property, The St. Regis hotel.
The lineage shows. Mr. Cotter, now 45, fell in love with hotels at the tender age of 19, when he arrived in San Francisco. There, he took a job at the Sheraton Palace, a century-old grande dame (as aging, elegant hotels are referred to in the industry), where he did everything from wash sheets to greet guests at the front desk. He also befriended the Palace's housekeeper, Molly Flannery. "She knew every inch of the place," Mr. Cotter recalls. "I really was enamored of its past."