John Mionczynski

By training and experience he is an accomplished naturalist/adventurer of the old-fashioned kind -- resourceful enough to earn comparisons to the magnanimous outlaw Butch Cassidy.

The project closest to Mionczynski's heart, though, was secret until recently: He's spent decades gathering evidence of a creature most people think is a myth -- a giant, secretive primate inhabiting the forests of Western North America that's known as Sasquatch, or Bigfoot. "It's a subject of ridicule, but I think it's also cutting-edge science," he says. "People being afraid to suffer ridicule has prevented science from moving forward.