The sky was dark when Steve Yanovsky returned home and opened his computer to a second world. The year was 1993. He had just closed off a long shift as a paramedic, but he was clocking into a different job, engineering with scientists across the globe to invent a new key imaging device.
He and his collaborators ended up selling the patent for $2.5 million in 2003, 10 years after they had begun working on it.
Today, his device can be found in stores like Home Depot, while Yanovsky can be found on the campaign trail as the 11th Middlesex congressional district’s Republican candidate.
Though the saga of his invention is just one of many varied career endeavors for Yanovsky, he says the story of his invention is a reflection of who he is.
“All of these things are related, whether it’s raising a child or writing a piece of music or running for public office,” Yanovsky said. “It’s this start-to-finish kind of a thing. First, you see in your mind, you have a vision, and then you start.’”
Yanovsky’s family moved to Brookline from Russia in 1981. After graduating from Brookline High School, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. His time in the armed forces brought him into healthcare. Today, he’s a paramedic, but he once considered becoming a medical doctor.
“It was a bit of a lateral and kind of a jagged path, because I was serving in the military at the time, and they wanted different things for me,” Yanovsky said. “I got credentialed in a wide range of clinical disciplines.”
This broad education and appetite for challenge led Yanovsky to start his own vocational healthcare school for adults in 2002, the Boston Career Institute in Brookline.
“We help people get jobs in the healthcare field and give them a step up from menial jobs like working in Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks,” Yanovsky said. “They make a lot more money and gain financial stability, and live to accomplish their American dream.”
It’s this work that inspired Yanovsky to step into politics on a platform of lowering taxes. He says he wants to help people with lower incomes who feel the strain of the high taxes in Newton and Brookline.
“Since I work with mostly people in the lower income strata, I see that their struggles are stemming from the impositions of the government, and people are being taxed to death,” Yanovsky said.
He also said he’s concerned about the government’s mismanagement of tax dollars, an issue he says he’d address at the state house.
“There’s a lot of waste and mismanagement of people’s money, and there’s a lot of money being captured in taxes,” Yanovsky said.`
Yanovsky wants to see more tax money go to infrastructure, an issue he thinks has been neglected in his district.
“Our streets are in a great degree of disrepair, and there’s no money for the infrastructure in a city like Newton,” Yanovsky said.
He thinks the government should channel this money from the public schools which he thinks make up too big a portion of the budget, considering not all residents choose to take advantage of them.
“A lot of people who live in Newton do send their kids to private schools and don’t utilize public schools,” Yanovsky said. “That’s a little bit of a disparity between people who don’t pay Newton taxes and receive the same benefits.”
Though Yanovsky hopes to join the state’s legislature, he says he’s not interested in adding unnecessary laws to the books and is only interested in protecting peoples’ freedom.
“I can tell you right now that there’s so many laws on the books that just about every person living in Massachusetts is in violation of some of them,” Yanovsky said. “That means that at any given time, anyone could be arrested or fined for something. Now, that’s no way to live.”
Yanovsky, an Orthodox Jew, is also cautious to legislate in response to the recent uptick in antisemitic hate crimes in his district, saying instead that perpetrators should be prosecuted on an individual basis.
“The Jewish people have lived through all sorts of hatred throughout generations,” Yanovsky said. “We’ll get through this too. But I think through legislation—I don’t think there’s any place for it.”
Though this is Yanovsky’s first introduction to politics, he’s confident his colorful life experiences have prepared him well.
“A person with vision and drive to succeed will have abilities to go from one place to another and still use the same skill sets,” Yanovsky said. “Just kind of mutated into a different form.”
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