In search of space aliens: His ideas are a mile high — and beyond. By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News

 - ET panel backer won't let critics bring him down - - Originally published 12:05 a.m., June 7, 2008 - Updated 11:53 a.m., June 9, 2008 -Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky Mountain News

Jeff Peckman is a 54-year-old who lives with his parents, promotes technology that supposedly creates harmony by manipulating electromagnetic fields and is behind an initiative to form a commission on extraterrestrials in Denver.

An easy target, to say the least: over the top, outside the box, off his rocker or ahead of his time?

"He's less ahead of his time if you put him in Boulder," said a friend, Jeff Mettais. "He's more ahead of his time in downtown Denver."

Peckman is derided, dismissed and deemed a doofus by detractors. But his family and friends consider him smart, funny and level-headed, a visionary who's not afraid to toss a spark into the tinderbox of public policy, even if he gets a little singed.

His projects - everything from technology called brain fingerprinting to an Oregon ballot initiative to label genetically engineered food to a proposed design for a building complex outside Rome - represent his desire to contribute to the greater good, done with absolute sincerity. And for every two strangers who consider Peckman a few cards shy of a deck, there's another who thinks he might be onto something.

"He's a very bright person, very energized," said Tom Frey, executive director of the Da Vinci Institute in Louisville, a nonprofit futurist think tank that lists Peckman as vice president of special projects.

Consider: In 2003, Peckman championed Initiative 101, which would have required the city to promote peacefulness. The campaign cost $2,000, and the initiative lost - with a respectable 32 percent of the vote.

"That is phenomenal," said Michael Mendocha, who has known Peckman for 30 years. "Somebody should be looking at this and saying, 'Let's harness this genius.' Jeff's got uncanny timing."

Pursuing his potential

In person, Peckman looks and sounds like your favorite college professor, the one who could get the whole class debating novel solutions to the world's problems. Tall and lanky with a full head of silvery hair and bright blue eyes, he favors button- down collars and gray suits and exudes a quiet intelligence mingled with a wry sense of humor.

"He doesn't take himself too seriously, but he's also very serious about life," Mettais said. "He's the most authentic and honest and sincere guy I know. He's the real deal. He's out there trying to make a positive difference."

Peckman's goals: "Clean air, healthy organic food, healthy buildings, harmony among the different populations on our planet - and the populations not from our planet," he said.

Peckman began venturing into uncharted territory as a 5- year-old, exploring the fields around his boyhood home in Paola, Kan., about 44 miles south of Kansas City.

The family eventually settled into an uneventful middle-class life in southwest Denver - dad Victor at work as a pipefitter, mom Lorene raising four kids at home, Sundays at church and dinner together in the evening. Peckman attended Goldrick Elementary, Kepner Middle School and Lincoln High School, where he had friends among the hippie kids and the jocks.

Even now, he remembers the moment in grade school when he was introduced to a concept that would shape his future.

"A friend ran up to us on the playground and said, 'My dad says you're using a tenth of your brain,'" he recalls. "I resolved almost immediately that I would develop my full mental potential. I saw a relationship between that and problems in the world and on the local level. I thought perhaps that's a cause - we aren't using our full human potential."

The way to do exactly that became clear after Peckman, then 18, attended a lecture on Transcendental Meditation, based on the teachings of the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. TM had such a profound effect on him - stress relief, renewed energy and focus - that Peckman became a teacher himself after a year at Mahareshi International University in Iowa. He married another TM teacher in 1978, and they spent the 28 years of their marriage traveling and teaching.

Promoting solutions

Peckman first popped into the public eye in 1998, when his name was put on the ballot as the U.S. Senate candidate for the Natural Law Party, a now-defunct group based on the Maharishi's teachings.

"Being a candidate, it's all about yourself. I don't like promoting myself. I like promoting solutions I know about," Peckman said.

His resolve to enter the world of ballot initiatives began at the moment when he and other third-party candidates were forced to put their campaign literature on the floor during a big political event, while the major parties sat at tables.

"Here I am with my stuff, a whole range of solutions, and it's stuck in a box on the floor. I thought, ballot initiatives are the way to go if you want to engage people in thoughtful deliberation about anything."

His Initiative 101 was dubbed "Safety through Peace."

"What I was introducing was the discovery that stress does build up in people and overflows, becomes secondary stress in the whole environment, just like secondhand smoke. And then everybody's affected," he said. "Just as there are ways to reduce individual stress, there are ways to reduce collective stress. When you do that, you'll see all these stress-related social indicators decrease: crime, violence, accidents, fires, hospital admissions, drug use."

Depite being ridiculed and misunderstood, the initiative got more than 28,000 votes.

"People call him a peacenik and this and that," said his younger brother, Tony. "But what's wrong with somebody wanting to have a commission just to kick around ideas about how (it) can make the workplace and schools a little more peaceful? It's never been done before, so of course, there are going to be critics and cynics."

Peckman wrote Measure 27, a 2002 Oregon initiative that would have required the labeling of genetically engineered food. Although it lost, it was endorsed by Paul McCartney, Consumers Union and others.

He also acted as a design consultant for a proposed construction project outside of Rome using Sthapatya Ved, an ancient Indian science that promotes health and well-being in building and design.

What do the feds know?

The seeds of the ET commission were planted a year ago, after Peckman heard a lecture by Stan Romanek, of Colorado Springs, who claims to have compelling evidence of involvement with all manner of other- worldly things. Peckman spent months quietly researching the issue before creating the initiative, which he calls a way to bring the public up to speed on what the government knows.

"He's not the kind that sits out with his binoculars looking for UFOs and joins UFO groups," said his ex-wife, Kathryn, still a close friend. "Jeff is such a networker, and he pulls people together. He started looking at it as a current event. Jeff is pretty level-headed that way. He's come to believe that it's very feasible. He didn't think he'd be in the public eye when he started."

For the record: Peckman didn't shoot the infamous alien at the window - Romanek did. Peckman never said anything about an alien invasion. And he never told anybody about his initiative - it was discovered in the public record by Rocky reporter Daniel J. Chacon.

"He's not an attention-getter, and it's not that he's so passionate about it," Tony Peckman said. "Jeff's main objective is that the government should open some of the files. He came across people who had a lot of evidence, and he thought, 'Why shouldn't we see it"

Derision goes with the territory for someone who puts extra- terrestrials and Denver in the same sentence. It doesn't bother Peckman, who never takes it personally, no matter how personal it gets.

"He's not afraid of the backlash," said older brother Rod. "We joke about it: Who's going to call me a goofball or weirdo this week?"

It does bother his family that Peckman has been mocked for moving in with their elderly parents after his divorce a couple of years ago. "He's doing a real service to his parents," Kathryn said. "They have medical problems, and I don't know what they'd do without him there right now. And he's doing a startup business. It's a mutually supportive thing."

Peckman's startup involves "Metatron Technology," which supposedly reduces stressful effects of electromagnetic fields generated by power lines, computers, cell phones and other electrical or electronic devices.

"I love these subtle technologies that are just very cutting- edge, a little ahead of the knowledge quotient and the market," he said. "I like to be right there as it's making its entry into the public's awareness - and to help do that, if I can."

Peckman is confident that his latest initiative not only will get on the ballot but will pass. And in the meantime, he's fulfilled one goal: getting people talking about a new idea.

"(My family) probably all wish I would get a normal job, because they know I invest a lot of time in things like this and don't get paid much, if anything at all," Peckman said. "At the same time, it does make for interesting conversation."

ryckmanl@RockyMountainNews.com  - Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News

The ballot initiative

Jeff Peckman needs the signatures of about 4,000 registered Denver voters to place his plan for an extraterrestrial affairs commission in Denver on the November ballot.

* Here's the abbreviated version of his ballot initiative:

Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such commission from grants, gifts and donations?

Support from anywhere online:  http://www.petitiononline.com/etaffair/petition.html

If you're a registered Denver voter here's where to go to sign petition: http://www.extracampaign.org/Petition_Signing.html