THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Jeff Chouinard, 84, died June 19, in a Thousand Oaks, Calif., convalescent hospital of heart and kidney failure.

He worked for many years for his brother, Yvon Chouinard, who founded Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company. Both were natives of Lisbon. He lived in Cundys Harbor and Simi Valley, Calif.

Gerald Conrad Chouinard was born in Lisbon, Sept. 23, 1923. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, training as a pilot, which remained a lifelong avocation. In January 1946, from the base in San Diego, he mailed his family a box of oranges with a letter encouraging them to move west. By March they had sold their house and auctioned off their furniture. He obtained leave to fly back and drive them out. The youngest of the Chouinard siblings, Yvon, was 7 and still spoke only French when he started school in Burbank, Calif.

After his discharge from the Navy, he settled in the Los Angeles area to be near his family. From 1950 to 1968, he worked as a private investigator, principally for Howard Hughes, for whom he served as a kind of chief of personal security. After Hughes’ death, he became a source of colorful stories for a succession of Hughes biographers.

During the early 1970s, he began to work for his brother (whom he had once employed to guard a boat Hughes wanted to buy). The Chouinard brothers opened Real Cheap Sports in 1981, an outlet for seconds and overstocks for Patagonia and other manufacturers.

In 1991, he purchased a cottage on the water in Cundys Harbor, a 40-minute drive from his childhood home. He spent the warmer half of each year there sailing, entertaining friends and family and occasionally scheming to get back his pilot’s license.

He is survived by his former wife, June of Simi Valley, Calif.; sons, Stephen of Fresno, Calif., and Daniel of San Francisco; daughter, Lisa of Carpinteria, Calif.; two granddaughters, Katherine and Renee of Fresno; two sisters, Rachel Hopkins of Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Doris Blackey of Thousand Oaks, Calif.; and his brother, Yvon of Ventura, Calif.