Eugene "Gene" Schmidt was the Senior VP of Project Design at Kinetic Corp, and the second victim of serial bomber Alessandro Rossilini. A forty-two year old father of three, Gene, when Kinetic Corp started cutting overhead costs in 1997, was forced to fire Alessandro and at least twenty others. During their last meeting, when Alessandro told him he had a family to support and a mortgage to pay, Gene advised him to take the severance package, and to try and find some temp work and acquire new skills, bluntly telling Alessandro he had become a commodity, as the company, along with every other in the area, was going to open plants overseas, where new engineers could be easily trained and paid only a fifth of an American's salary.