Trailblazing WA entrepreneur and Pay Plus Benefits co-founder dies
John Heaton, a onetime crop duster who built a business empire handling human resources for clients around the country, has died.
Heaton, 80, of Richland, cofounded Pay Plus Benefits Inc. in Kennewick in 1990 with business associate Vicki Gordon.
Pay Plus Benefits leveraged Heaton’s interest in business and computers to create a virtual human resources department for clients willing to pay outside experts to manage their payroll, retirement, health insurance and other benefits.
Gordon and Heaton worked together at a different company before venturing to start their own business. She sold her share after seven years to focus on the family’s winery and farm businesses. She was thrilled to see Pay Plus Benefits grow into a nationwide concern.
“John was so smart, brave — a real entrepreneur. I’m so proud to have been a small part of his world,” she told the Tri-City Herald.
He died Sept. 28 of complications from a perforated stomach ulcer.
Love of aviation
Heaton was born in Nampa, Idaho, grew up in Montana and served in the Army before moving to the Mid-Columbia to pursue his love of aviation as a crop duster in 1968.
He met Althea Hardwick while skydiving at the Richland Airport in 1969, and the couple married the following year. They initially called Basin City home while he worked for a series of crop dusting companies before he formed his own, Air Tech Inc.
Althea Heaton said the experiences as well as owning his own farm in Goldendale sparked an enduring fascination with the logistics of running any and all types of businesses.
He read every business text he could find in the library at Columbia Basin College in Pasco. The school honored his ongoing commitment to its success by giving him an honorary degree.
Predicted smartphones
Althea Heaton said her husband took an early interest in the emerging world of personal computers. Long before computers were standard in most homes, Heaton told his wife that people would one day access information through handheld devices.
His interest in farming and computers led him to create Farm Business Computers, which helped farmers computerize the records they typically stored in shoeboxes, she said. He sold them the computers too.
The initiative caught the attention of Northwest Farm Management, which took over distressed farms and managed them.
He went to work for the management firm after it agreed to pay off a loan he’d taken out to finance the business. He met Vicki Gordon at Northwest Farm Management, where the two were colleagues for about five years before they agreed they could expand beyond just farms.
The two peeled off to create Pay Plus Benefits.
“We were quite the trailblazers back then, ... fearless in starting the first professional employer organization in Washington,” Gordon recalled.
Within a decade, it was winning notice from influential corners.
Washington CEO magazine/Cisco lauded it in its 1990 “Best Companies” list, according to Tri-City Herald archives. At the time, Pay Plus employed 14 and served more than 750 workers through its clients.
Enabling remote work
Althea Heaton said her husband never stopped thinking about ways to expand and innovate.
When the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the work-from-home movement, he spied a new niche. Remote workers were causing problems for employers by moving to other states, states with income taxes and their own employment laws.
Pay Plus Benefits branched into the remote work world, creating platform to enable remote workers to work legally in almost every state.
Clients praised the new service, saying it let it recruit workers from areas it hadn’t been able to reach.
The company will continue operating under interim CEO, a longtime friend, Althea Heaton said.
Heaton was equally energetic outside work — he was a skier, a scuba diver and a world traveler. He was a regular donor to the American Red Cross, Junior Achievement, Mid-Columbia Symphony and Grace Clinic.
In addition to his wife, Heaton is survived by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Services will be held at 1 p.m.., Nov. 2, at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 1807 McMurray Ave., Richland.
This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.