https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/pacific-grove-ca/randall-reinstedt-11387385
(tiny notice and date of service, this September)

I thought he lived in Carmel, but that's only six miles from Pacific Grove.

I had to search harder to find a real obit, though!

http://pineconearchive.fileburstcdn.com/230804PC.pdf

Scroll to page 17A.

I can't copy all of it without making a mess, but:

....Born in the Monterey hospital on Hartnell Street on Feb. 23, 1935, Reinstedt was attending Monterey High when his romance with the Concours began the year the Pebble Beach Road Races and accompanying show debuted. “We’d sneak in and watch the races every year, and then we would always wander down to the cars and take a look at what was then a minuscule Concours,” he told The Pine Cone in 2002.Even when he lived out of the area while attending San Jose State University for his undergrad degree, working for the City of Vallejo and later going to Fresno State for his teaching credential, Reinstedt made the trip home for the Concours.It was also during those years that he paid $450 for
the car he would later enter in the competition. Reinst-edt found the 1953 Jowett Jupiter, an English sports car of which only 1,000 were made over a four-year period, after it had been left sitting in a Monterey garage.After another driver ran into him on a San Francisco freeway and the insurance company nearly forced him to junk the car, he managed to get it carefully restored, and it looked so good that he decided to show it. At the P.B. Con-cours, to his surprise, the little car won third place...

....Many who spent their childhoods here are familiar with Reinstedt’s books on the “history and happenings of Cali-fornia,” and “regional history and lore,” including several titles about ghosts, sea monsters, pirates and shipwrecks. His books were often required reading for local schoolkids, including “More than Memories — History & Happenings of the Monterey Peninsula,” which was first published in 1985 and distributed for free to local fourth-graders. In 2001, it was reprinted courtesy of the Panetta Institute and delivered, again free, to third- and fourth-graders. And a decade ago, the Reindstedts printed another 1,000 copies through their Carmel-based Ghost Town Publications and gave them away to community members who asked for them. Some 400,000 copies of Reinstedt’s 20 titles have been printed over the years, and just a couple of weeks ago, he was with his wife in Big Sur distributing copies.“I sometimes wonder what the Peninsula would look like if it weren’t for my dad. You would hear people say it was his stories that made them interested in history or made them notice the adobes,” Erick said, observing that his father likely had a hand in inspiring people to fight for historic preservation here.Reinstedt’s name would be mentioned in the flyleaf notes penned by other local history authors who credited him with inspiring them. The kids who read “More than Memories” would subsequently take their parents on his-tory tours of the Monterey Peninsula to share what they had learned.“He had students who as adults in their 30s were still sending him photos of their own kids or writing letters,” Erick continued. “He touched a lot of lives.”He speculated Reinstedt’s interest stemmed from the rides he’d take with his father, who drove a Chevron gas truck way out in Carmel Valley and down the Big Sur Coast. “He talked so fondly of meeting all these old timers when he was a kid,” Erick said. “I think that’s where his love of history came from."

While working as director of recreation for the City of Vallejo after graduating from San Jose State, Reinstedt began dating Debbie, who was four years younger and was also from the Peninsula. They married on June 25, 1961, and the couple headed to Fresno so he could earn his teaching credential.While teaching fourth grade, he also worked as a tour guide in the summers —and in 1964 took Debbie along on an adventure around the world that lasted 56 days. The group included travelers ranging from teenagers to octoge-narians, she recalled.They loved Venice, explored Barcelona on their own, and rallied when, in Singapore, she dutifully turned all the passengers’ passports in for a visit to Macau —but left his and hers in her purse by mistake. “So the group went without us,” she said. “It was totally fine.”The following year, they had their only child, Erick.

“He had a classroom full of kids, so he only needed one,” Debbie explained.The family has always been very close. When Erick attended West Point and grew homesick, his father visited. Because he was a writer and researcher, Reinstedt could get permission to be in the library after hours, and the two would sit in the stacks and talk.“He was always there for me,” he said. “I had the most supportive, loving home you could have ever wanted while growing up.”Erick ended his military career in the early 1990s and became pastor of a church in Lockwood. His wife, Mary Ann, was so welcomed by his parents that she essentially became a daughter to them, and their daughters, Bethany and Abigail, adored Reinstedt, too.While the family will no doubt hold a memorial for Reinstedt, and it will likely be very well attended, they have yet to set a date or decide any of the details. In the meantime, they’re asking friends and fans to share their memories of Reinstedt by emailing ..., and to indicate whether they’re inter-ested in receiving information about the memorial service.
_______________________________________________

What I posted in 2015:

http://www.carmelmagazine.com/archive/14ho/reinstedt.shtml
(article: "Randy Reinstedt Makes History Fun: A Lifetime Fascination with the Monterey Peninsula")

Excerpt:

....While a teacher, Reinstedt was contributing articles to history-based magazines such as True West and Frontier Times. "I was approached to produce a piece about the Monterey adobes," he remembers. "My first thought? No one but a history nut like me would be interested in reading it." That's when he remembered his paperboy days. "While doing collections, I got to know a lot of the old-timers and they shared their stories." Many of those stories involved ghosts and strange happenings in and around the spooky looking mud brick buildings that survive from Monterey's Spanish era. "I incorporated ghost stories into the magazine article, and that brought it to life. The ghosts were a hook: they got people in and then they learned their history." Soon, people were seeking him out to share their own spooky tales. And the stories are legion: With its often fog-shrouded, spindly, lichen-dripping Cypress trees, this stretch of California coastline is prime territory for creepy occurrences, actual or imagined.

Those stories were compiled in "Ghosts, Bandits and Legends of Old Monterey, Carmel and Surrounding Areas", the first of what would become a series of books about mysterious events in and around the Peninsula: "Shipwrecks and Sea Monsters of California's Central Coast"; "Tales, Treasures and Pirates of Old Monterey"; and "The Strange Case of the Ghosts of the Robert Louis Stevenson House" are among the titles Reinstedt publishes under the aegis of his company, Ghost Town Publications. Ironically, Reinstedt has never personally experienced a ghost or supernatural event. "But I'm totally convinced that they're real. There are happenings that we just don't understand."....

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/250560.Randall_A_Reinstedt
(a few reviews)

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=911&noj=1&tbm=vid&q=randy+reinstedt&oq=randy+reinstedt&gs_l=serp.3...11713.12089.0.12473.4.4.0.0.0.0.223.223.2-1.1.0.msedr...0...1c.1.62.serp..4.0.0.1gii1Osr7Xc
(videos - three include the man himself)

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=911&noj=1&tbm=isch&oq=randall+reinstedt+&gs_l=img.3...1896.1896.0.2145.1.1.0.0.0.0.223.223.2-1.1.0.msedr...0...1c.1.62.img..1.0.0.riJAP3ahw4s&q=randall+reinstedt#imgdii=_
(a couple of photos and many book covers)
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

* Dinosaur Dan, illustrated by Michael A. Hampshire, Ginn, 1971.
*Gold in the Santa Lucias, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1973, reprinted as Monterey's Mother Lode, 1977.
*Ghosts, Bandits and Legends of Old Monterey . . . Carmel, and Surrounding Areas, illustrated by Thornton Harby, Ghost Town Publications, 1974, revised edition, 1995.
*Shipwrecks and Sea Monsters of California's Central Coast, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1975.
*Tales, Treasures, and Pirates of Old Monterey, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1976.
*Ghostly Tales and Mysterious Happenings of Old Monterey, illustrated by Antone A. Hrusa, Ghost Town Publications, 1977.
*Where Have All the Sardines Gone?: A Pictorial History of Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Old Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf and Sardine Industry, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1978.
*Mysterious Sea Monsters of California's Central Coast, illustrated by Ed Greco, Ghost Town Publications, 1979, 1993.

*Incredible Ghosts of Old Monterey's Hotel Del Monte, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1980.
*Incredible Ghosts of the Big Sur Coast, illustrated with photographs, Ghost Town Publications, 1981.
*More Than Memories: History and Happenings of the Monterey Peninsula, illustrated, Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, 1985, revised and updated, 2002.
*Stagecoast Santa, illustrated by Judith L. Macdonald, Ghost Town Publications, 1986.
*The Monterey Peninsula: An Enchanted Land, illustrated with photographs, Windsor Publications, 1987.
*Otters, Octopuses, and Odd Creatures of the Deep, illustrated by David F. Aguero, cover illustration by Ed Greco, Ghost Town Publications, 1987.
*The Strange Case of the Ghosts of the Robert Louis Stevenson House, illustrated by B. Allen (Kip) Iliff, Ghost Town Publications, 1988.