It was tempting to read more of Ben’s work, but I remembered I meant to look up Caro’s. When she’d graduated from SUNY’s journalism school in New Paltz, we weren’t speaking—I was seventeen then and living with Reagan and her mom—but I’d kept track of Caro online, reading some of her articles for women’s magazines and travel sites and mocking them. It had been another two years before we’d spoken to each other, and right around that time she’d published a profile of Theo Thraxton in a glossy magazine I couldn’t recall the name of. It came up quickly online. The title was “Thraxton Heir or Modern-Day Indiana Jones?,” which was objectively terrible by any measure. It was part of a “30 under 30” article, and it was short. But I remembered it was filled with curious nuggets that didn’t usually turn up in puff pieces. I clicked on it and found a photo of Theo in a full-body neoprene wet suit, standing next to a broken stone head with seaweed on it. I started reading.

The Thraxton name is synonymous with luxury. With a hotel empire that operates in 38 countries, you would imagine that Theodore R. Thraxton Junior—or Theo, as he prefers to be called—has his hands full as the company’s vice president and CEO of global operations. But Thraxton, 27, has an unusual side hustle, repatriating stolen antiquities to their home countries.

“The truth is, I never wanted to be in the hotel business,” Thraxton admits. “That was my father’s dream for me, and I failed on my first try when I was studying in Berlin.” But Thraxton went on to enroll in Harvard’s ambitious MBA/JD program, where he graduated near the top of his class.

“My intent wasn’t to practice law,” Thraxton says. “But I grew up seeing how people manipulate the law to get what they want. It’s not a level playing field. I wanted to understand how to navigate the system.” His first success happened last year, when he helped the Thai government recover several pieces of Ban Chiang pottery—believed to be at least 2,000 years old—from an American museum that would prefer not to be named.

“Museums tend to be careful about the provenance of pieces today, but that wasn’t always true,” Thraxton says. “It’s part of the legacy of colonialism, holding on to other people’s heritage.”