When Aaron Stanton was a student at the University of Idaho, he had an idea. He tried to bankroll the idea on his own, but soon realized he would need much deeper pockets to make his idea work.

And, he thought, who better than the folks at Google Inc. to help bring his idea to reality.

A couple of years ago, he made some half-hearted attempts to reach the Mountain View Calif.-based company by telephone and e-mail. But he got nowhere.

Then this past Christmas, his father got sick and nearly died, and Stanton, 25, of Boise, knew if he was ever going to make his dad proud, he'd better make his move soon. He decided to go to Google, show up unannounced and make his pitch. He bought a plane ticket for a flight on Feb. 11 and the die was cast.

"I figured the worst that could happen was I got down here and found myself spending a week in Mountain View," Stanton said in a telephone interview from California.