By Elizabeth Cloutman

The corporate headquarters of Systan, Inc. is a small office, filled with files and stacks of paperwork, on Second Street in downtown Los Altos. Yet the size of the office does not reflect the wide-ranging transportation research for governmental agencies, commercial enterprises and international organizations Systan’s professional consultants have conducted in the 36 years it has been in operation.

Two of Systan’s industrial engineers, Roy Lave and John Billheimer, have influenced others’ lives not through their transportation research, but also by what they do on their own time. Lave has volunteered many hours to community service over the years. Billheimer is the author of three mystery novels about Owen Allison, a California transportation expert who becomes entangled in corruption and murder whenever he returns to his native West Virginia.

Lave and Donald Kyle co-founded Systan - short for systems analysis - in 1966 to provide consulting services in systems analysis and policy research for government agencies and industrial and commercial enterprises. Billheimer joined Systan in 1972. “We primarily respond to requests for proposals from public agencies, the federal government, the state government,” Billheimer said.

Lave, the CEO of Systan, specializes in analyzing transportation projects. Currently, he is part of an evaluation team evaluating Translink, a system in which a commuter purchases a single “smart” card that he or she could use as a pass in any of the Bay Area’s 28 transit districts.

Billheimer, Systan vice president, co-founded the California Motorcyclist Safety Program, a statewide program that mandated safety education for motorcyclists under 21. The program has led to a 70 percent drop in motorcycle fatalities, he noted.

Lave and his wife, Penny, Los Altos residents for 38 years, have long been active in community affairs. Lave was a city councilman form 1974 to 1982 and Los Altos mayor for a two-year term in 1976-78. Lave co-founded the Community Foundation in 1991 and has served as its president. When the Los Altos Conservatory Theatre closed in 1994, Lave was one of the board members who urged the city council to purchase the repertoire company’s assets.

Billheimer has found much satisfaction in writing three Owen Allison mysteries. After a lifetime devoted to systems analysis, the Portola Valley resident begin writing fiction in the 1980s. Billheimer and 12 other writers meet monthly at Ellen Sussman’s Los Altos Hills home.

Billheimer’s first Owen Allison novel, “Contrary Blues,” began as a short story about a bus-service scandal in West Virginia mountain country. His second novel, “Highway Robbery,” was recently published in a paperback edition, and, “Dismal Mountain,” was published last fall.

Allison shares a few common characteristics with Billheimer. Besides being a California transportation expert, Billheimer is a native of a small town in West Virginia, has a beard and a poodle named Buster.

Billheimer joked that he was slightly insulted when the members of his writing group found Allison a “dull” man in comparison to some of the more colorful characters in his novels. He added, laughing, that he changed his poodle Buster’s sex from female to male in his novels “so she wouldn’t recognize herself.”

For more information about Systan, Inc., logon to www.systan.com. For more information on Billheimer’s novels, logon to www.johnbillheimer.com.