Utah Renaissance man Oran Stainbrook is familiar with long odds and lost causes, and he is no stranger to beating them.
For example, he was recently repatriated with the U.S. Naval Academy graduation ring he lost while swimming in the ocean near Tahiti. An accomplished female diver found it, looked him up on the Internet and returned the ring to the newly minted naval ensign.
In the process, he also found true love.
Alas, that was for reel, not for real. It happened in “Love in Tahiti,” the fictitious flick now streaming on Amazon Prime that Stainbrook co-stars in with German actor Lary Muller.
In real life, Stainbrook is a designer, builder and part-time actor. He holds a degree in architecture from Portland State University, not a Naval Academy diploma. And the historic general store he now calls home in Utah’s rural Carbon County is oceans apart from Annapolis or Tahiti.
That said, his latest role or foray into the improbable is perhaps even more implausible than the script for his latest movie.
Ghost of a chance
A political neophyte, Stainbrook is running as an independent for the state Legislature in rural and GOP-dominated Utah Senate District 26, vying against incumbent Republican Sen. David Hinkins.
“In some ways, I think he has been a great senator,” Stainbrook said. “He is well-liked, so my giving him a challenge is a bit of a longshot.”
Vince Brown, director of Utah Tech University’s Institute of Politics, concurs. He noted many areas of Stainbrook’s district — which includes Carbon, Emery, Grand, Kane, San Juan, Utah and Wasatch counties as a result of the latest redistricting — are heavily Republican and lean hard right.
“It would be very difficult for a Democrat or an independent to win in that district as it has been redrawn, which is never to say it would be impossible,” said Brown, director of Utah Tech University’s Institute of Politics.
If Stainbrook has a ghost of a chance of winning, he takes solace in the fact that ghost towns are some of his favorite haunts. He currently resides in Kenilworth, a once-thriving Carbon County coal town now not far removed from a ghost town. It is inhabited by about 200 people.
“I was drawn to old mining towns when I was in high school in Nevada,” Stainbrook recalled. ”I spent a lot of time with my friends exploring all the ghost towns throughout the state. That’s how I developed a love for historic buildings, architecture and these old mining towns.”
Moving up and moving on
Stainbrook was born and spent his early boyhood years in Orem before his parents divorced when he was 5 years old. Both his parents subsequently remarried and moved often with their new spouses. Stainbrook recalls dividing his time between the two households — one of nine siblings and step-siblings — in places like Nephi and Heber City before moving to Spring City, Nevada, when his father took a gold mining job in Elko.
At Spring Creek High School, Stainbook played sports but excelled in art, the classroom and on stage.
“I’ve always been kind of a jack-of-all-trades,” he said. “But I found my niche in theater, speech, debate and on the [school’s] academic team. Those were my extracurricular activities.”
(Candlelight Media Group) Oran Stainbrook appears in the 2023 film "Love in Tahiti."
He was also active in student government as a class representative, trained in conflict resolution, served as a “peer mediator” and earned several scholarships after winning regional speech competitions.
“He was very smart, thoughtful, engaging and an excellent student who was always looking for new causes to take up,” longtime friend Nicholas La Palm said. “Anything that helps the world get to a better place is what drives Oran.”
After earning his bachelor’s degree, Stainbrook studied off-grid development, spruced up on landscape design and gardening skills and freelanced as a landscaper, handyman and designer-builder. He also pursued acting and modeling jobs. He was accepted for a dual master’s program in landscape architecture and city planning at the University of California-Berkeley.
Stainbrook decided not to stay the course at the prestigious school. He said he determined the cost of finishing the four-year program was too high and wasn’t content to read or learn about design projects.
“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life paying off student loan debt,” he said. “I felt much more interested in doing real-life, design-build projects. So I withdrew from the program and went into business for myself, taking on real-world clients and projects.”
For the next several years he worked for a hospitality startup in the Bay Area, designing custom sleep pods. He followed that working as a field supporter for Habitat for Humanity, repairing and revitalizing homes in San Francisco’s lowest-income neighborhoods.
Staking his claim, setting a new course
Tired of urban life, Stainbrook decided to look for a rural “fixer-upper” where he could employ all his skills to start his own business. When he saw the old general store in Kenilworth, long abandoned since the closing of the Independent Coal & Coke Company in the late 1960s, it was an Eureka moment.
(Oran Stainbrook) Oran Stainbrook takes a photograph during a remodel of a general store in Kenilworth, outside Helper.
“It was love at first sight,” said Stainbrook, who quit his job in 2019 and who scraped together $45,000 with friends to purchase the store. “I moved into the building right away, even before there was any running water and it was nearly unlivable.”
That was five years ago. Since then, Stainbrook has largely realized his dream to turn the 10,000-square-foot store into his home, a haven for artists and a gathering place for town events like meetings and potluck dinners. He rents studio space in the building to artists and rents out apartments at affordable prices. He further supplements his income by doing more building projects and taking on acting jobs.
Briefs, bare chests and googly-eyed girls
In addition to “Love in Tahiti,” Stainbrook has starred in scores of commercials for Shady Ray Sunglasses, Mercedes-Benz and underwear companies. Neighbors don’t get overwrought at his underwear ads, though they have prompted some giggles from some googly-eyed teenage girls in town.
Stainbrook calls his gig in Tahiti a blast. He did his own stunts, rode jet skis and took a deep — albeit brief — dive on scuba lessons before filming began on his underwater scenes. The toughest part of the three-week shoot in Tahiti, he said, was coming down with bronchitis.
“I was ill but I had to fight through it,” he said, “because it was a multimillion-dollar production. There was no way we could wait or postpone filming.”
Stainbrook’s latest starring role is in “Altered Perceptions,” an indie film that supports a cast that includes Eric Roberts and Sally Kirkland. Directed by Jorge Ameer, the movie is about a post-pandemic Earth plagued by a virus that triggers homicides, mass murders and bizarre behavior.
Despite such dystopian roles, Stainbrook views acting as a safe space where he can feel a sense of community and explore different aspects of the human psyche and experience. On film or in life, he avoids typecasting. Like his heroes Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, he strives to be proficient in a wide variety of areas.
“Part of what made those two men so successful is … they were generalists who maintained a kind of curiosity that allowed them to explore many disparate fields of art, science and politics,” Stainbrook said. “That’s what led to some of their most brilliant insights and inventions.”
Bridging the divide
Stainbrook’s latest role as a political candidate is perhaps his toughest. He is frustrated by the partisan division that characterizes today’s politics.
“We have this cancerous growth that is tearing our communities apart,” he said. “We need leaders and politicians who will refuse to buy into the division and work to be peacebuilders and bridge builders.”
While most view Senate District 26 as a red district, Stainbrook views it as purple — filled with independent-minded voters who are ready to embrace a moderate whose views appeal to Republicans and Democrats.
Affordable housing tops Stainbrook’s political platform. He argues housing insecurity is at the root of poverty, substance abuse, civic disengagement and other societal ills. One among many of his solutions: relax zoning and building requirements that discourage affordable housing.
In addition, he calls for upgrading the area’s coal-fired power plants through carbon capture/sequestration to make them run cleaner and maintain the district’s good jobs and tax base. He also is pushing for economic diversification. As part of that effort, he favors offering incentives to lure entrepreneurs and tech workers to move to the district, where the fiber Internet system will enable them to work remotely and enjoy the rural lifestyle.
Sure, his candidacy may be a longshot, Stainbrook acknowledges, but he already has secured more than enough signatures to get on the general election ballot. Moreover, he has built relationships with people on both sides of the aisle and hosts a podcast, “The Store,” each Monday which features politicians, business owners and other leaders in a wide variety of disciplines.
Whether such efforts win over enough voters in November is uncertain. They nonetheless ring true for Stainbrook.
“If getting elected is all you care about, then you go with whatever party gives you the best chance of winning. I’d rather lose than … be attached to a party and be pressured to align with that party’s values and goals. I’d rather be free to prioritize the needs of rural southeast Utah above party politics.”
