Daniel Adrian Adams

Daniel Adrian Adams, age 71, passed away in Mesa, Arizona on October 2, 2022, after a long illness. Daniel was born in Hugoton, Kansas on January 15, 1951, to David and Norma Adams. He was the middle of 3 sons with older brother David and younger brother Doug each one being a year and a half apart.

Daniel’s family moved to Tempe, Arizona in 1959 where he attended elementary school,

Phoenix Christian High School, Mesa Community College and Arizona State University. He received degrees in both zoology and accounting.

Daniel met his wonderful wife to be Lois, when they were active in the youth groups at Tempe First Baptist Church, near ASU, getting to know each other over volleyball games, swim parties, movies, and mountain hikes. Wedding bells rang on June 1, 1973, just after her high school graduation and they were married for 49 wonderful years. Theirs was a happy marriage of forever love with no harsh words spoken and always humor. Their advice to young couples is the same advice Lois received from her dad, “never go to bed angry”, and when disagreements occur, hold your tongue, go to your corners and chill, then work things out together and share some ice cream.

Throughout his life, Daniel had many varied interests. In high school, he played football and basketball and received a football scholarship to MCC. Before the first game ended, a tackle broke his collarbone so he turned instead to music. Luckily, he and his brothers had sung in church choirs and the MCC Music Director, Jimmy Hendrix (yes, his real name) wrangled a new music scholarship for him, this time in voice. Road trips were fun and the students were devoted to Hendrix.

Another sport Daniel enjoyed in life was jogging. He became a long-distance runner on the canal banks that wind through Mesa, Tempe and Scottsdale. He often entered 10K and marathons. Later he joined the LA Fitness gym where he made many good friends who all encouraged each other in weightlifting and have lasted through the years. Daniel organized a restaurant luncheon for those guys each year in early November and the gang often met for weekly breakfasts.

As a teenager, Daniel was interested in the FBI. After graduating from ASU, he applied to the

FBI and was accepted for training in Quantico, Virginia, and worked as an agent in Phoenix,

Detroit and New York City. Because of his accounting background, Daniel was assigned to white-collar crime. He had a variety of assignments from guarding a suspicious foreign diplomat, to tracking down criminals fraudulently using Medicare or those stealing identities using stolen credit cards.

The criminals and capers led Daniel to begin writing screenplays, which in recent years he turned into novels. He received the nickname “Crash” because he once busted down a door during his FBI years to catch a criminal. When he marketed his screenplays in Hollywood, it was under his nickname, Crash Adams.

With his love for both writing and photography, Daniel turned to film. He wrote and directed low-budget Indy films based on his screenplays during 2000-20005. Fool’s Gold (a two-man thriller shot in the Galiuro Mountains in southern Arizona), A Lifetime (a hospital nurse cares for a dying woman only to discover that she is her mother), , Miracle Motors, a comedy spoof on used-car salespeople (filmed in Chandler), Contingency (4-episode thriller, female hit-man, filmed in LA. on YouTube). He co-wrote a screenplay, Second Chances, and it was picked up by producers who made the family film about an injured horse and injured girl (shown in theaters, TV and on the web).

Daniel began turning his screenplays into novels and has 38 books for sale on Amazon. They are fast-moving, action-packed detective mysteries and thrillers featuring the duo of Troy Barclay and Amber Neilson. The stories take place in Phoenix, Tucson, the Grand Canyon, NYC, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C, and London. He also has written two other detective series, teen coming of age stories, and Sherlock Holmes stories with a young boy and his family and obtained approval from the Holmes Society in London.

During his lifetime, Daniel wore many hats well. He will be remembered for culinary and baking skills, of pizza and Mexican dishes. Daniel learned to cook dinner for his family when he was 12 when his mother began working and she taught him the basics of meatloaf, chicken, and Jell-O. She taught him how to make cinnamon rolls and he refined the recipe. His cinnamon rolls were loved by friends and family and requested often! At one point, he delivered fresh cinnamon rolls weekly to the USO lounge at Sky Harbor Airport for service men and women to enjoy while on a layover.

He also wore the realtor hat earlier in his career and together with his brother Doug, developed condos in Gilbert and hundreds of apartments for ASU students on the Mesa/Tempe border. Doug was the designer and Daniel was the builder. The challenges were heavy, but the projects were developed and still look great today.

Vacations were road trips through California, San Diego, Napa Valley, the Oregon Coast, Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, and salmon fishing in British Columbia, made for fun photography stops, fresh berry pie restaurants, fresh fish dinners, misty mornings in campgrounds and beautiful sunsets.

Daniel was interested in rocks and mines and studied geology on his own. He became fond of turquoise stones and searched the many Native American shops on 5th Avenue in Scottsdale for silver jewelry created with the stones that were mined in Arizona and Nevada and for pawned jewelry. He loved the blue stones and Lois was adorned with the beautiful necklaces, earrings and cuff bracelets.

Daniel’s interests also led him to wine and vineyards, as Doug was developing land for vineyards. To experiment with what wines could be developed and grown in Arizona he planted Cabernet varieties and Pinot Noir in his backyard. It began with a day of many friends shoveling into buckets the soil, gravel, fertilizer and the rooted cuttings. The vineyard has been growing for 8 years, with Daniel researching, and tending to fertilizers, white flies, bugs, worms, birds, netting, watering, harvesting, and crushing resulting in many containers of aging wine. One year Lois' mother, Elsie, helped crush.

Daniel loved his family which included his 2 nieces and a nephew, children of Lois’ brother, Bruce and wife Joyce who live in Yuma, AZ. Lois and Daniel were frequent guests and he was known as “Great Uncle Dan”. This is where it became obvious that he was just a big kid at heart. He and Lois took them to “The Sweet Shop” for candy of all kinds. He played games with Melissa, Marilyn, and Steve as they were growing up such as hide and seek in plain sight and water balloon battles. Upon Uncle Dan’s departure to Tempe, one of them just might have found a stray water balloon under their pillow.

Daniel is survived by his wife, Lois Elaine (Jensen) Adams, his brother Doug Adams, his brother-in-law, Bruce Jensen (Joyce), nieces Melissa Loftice (Nathan), Marilyn Lammel (Andrew), nephew Steven Jensen (Kaylee) and 6 great nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents David and Norma Adams and by his brother David Adams.

Daniel had a strong faith in God, and was thankful for all who helped achieve his life dreams. He will be remembered for living an enthusiastic, ambitious, and adventurous life, for his quick sense of humor, for his generous spirit, willingness to help others and for his love for his family.

A celebration of life for Daniel will be held Saturday, November 12, 2022 at 11:00 AM at Lakeshore Mortuary, 1815 South Dobson Road, Mesa, Arizona 85202.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.LakeshoreMort.com for the Adams family.