Lopping limbs, refilling glasses

youth crew has been building this dock at Phillips Reservoir. (Baker City Herald/Nathan Hellman)

For others, taking in the placid waters of Phillips Reservoir over a sack lunch is commonplace.

Refilling diners’ water glasses during the lunchtime rush at a downtown cafe, or preparing a food box for an upcoming delivery, is the status quo for a few others.

The program is coordinated through the Oregon Training and Employment Consortium and funding comes from a handful of sources.

Much of this year’s expansion is thanks to more than $110,000 from the $787 billion federal stimulus package Congress passed in February.

With the largest crop of youth in the program in more than a decade, the young workers are partaking in a whole spectrum of jobs and gaining a wide variety of experiences this summer.

The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest employs 25 of the 45, dividing the workers into five crews that sometimes work all together, and sometimes on separate projects.

For those who aren’t working for the Wallowa-Whitman, the jobs are more varied, ranging, from waiting tables to helping out at an organic orchard to assisting in an office.

Here’s a glimpse into what a few of the workers have been up to this summer.

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest

Rarely do you hear teenagers lauding the notion of enduring exhausting work, but that’s been commonplace for at least one of the Forest Service’s five youth crews this summer.

Crowded around the back of a white pickup truck and making short work of their packed lunches, workers Cody Powell, James Dederer and Skyler Girt were anxious to get back on the job.

“We’re always excited to get back to work,” Dederer said. “I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. It makes you feel lazy.”

That word hasn’t factored in often this summer for the Forest Service crews.

Between clearing trails, building docks, lopping limbs, patching potholes and fixing fences, the 25 forest workers have remained busy, sweaty and fatigued throughout the dog days of summer.

Tom Smit has been the project manager for the youth program for over 20 years and is quite impressed with the breadth of work this year’s crews have accomplished.

Smit said he never imagined that some of the projects the crews have undertaken would ever see completion.

He is surprised, but also satisfied.

While Smit oversees nearly the entire operation, the youth look to crew leaders for daily leadership and direction. Each of the five crews has a leader, who were picked based on their knowledge and ability to supervise and teach.

First-time crew leader Troy Tubbs has led an ambitious group responsible for clearing an estimated 130 miles of trails in the Elkhorn Mountains in just five weeks.

Along the way Tubbs, a science teacher at Pine-Eagle High School, has taken advantage of his surroundings in the forest, pointing out various plants and trees to the youngsters in hopes that the names and information he shares will resonate.

But that’s not all Tubbs, who his crewmembers have nicknamed “The Energizer Monkey” due to his trail-clearing aptitude, has passed on to his team.

“Their endurance has increased, and their independence has increased, and they’ve worked on map reading,” said Tubbs, 30. “And early on we had a discussion about being here on time.”

Like Tubbs, crew leader Larry Skeen has developed a solid rapport with his crew.

Skeen’s workers have been stationed at Phillips Reservoir the entire summer where they have been building new docks.

While they said at first they were skeptical of the task, the youth have enjoyed it and feel like the experience has been worthwhile.

“This job is pretty fun. I like working in the outdoors because you get to do something,” said Trever Simmons, a 19-year-old who has also worked at Barley Brown’s and Sumpter Junction restaurants in Baker City.

The crew is nearly finished with the dock they built from scratch. They also assembled another old wooden dock last week that has no immediate use but could serve as a replacement.

More than anything, the crewmembers feel like they have learned the value of teamwork, improved their communication skills and helped themselves network for the future.

“It’s been awesome,” said Katie Blake, 18. “It’s been a lot of fun and we’ve met a lot of cool people.”

The Salvation Army

During his time at The Salvation Army, Dan Camarata has worked with the summer youth program through TEC several times.

Over this five-year period, he said the experience has been about 90 percent good and 10 percent bad.

This  summer’s worker, Chevy Doud, appears to have fallen into Camarata’s “good” category.

“There is a lot to learn and you want somebody who is motivated,” Camarata said, applauding Doud’s performance.

Since starting at The Salvation Army in late June, Doud has met that challenge while tending to a number of duties, including helping with food pickups and deliveries, sorting clothes, assisting customers and working the cash register.

But he admits, with a laugh, that sometimes when he is strolling around the store looking for customers to help they tend to avoid him. He attributes this to the fact that he’s a teenager — and one who has green hair at that. 

Nonetheless, Doud said he likes the job, which is his first.

“I’d probably just be hanging out with friends the whole time,” the 16-year-old said of life without the job. “But I prefer working because I have money.”

Doud is also happy to have the job because he feels he is spending his time more efficiently this summer, rather than “sleeping until noon and then waiting two hours to go anywhere,” like some previous summers. 

Baker City Cafe

Like most who frequent cafes, Emmi Williams prefers to dabble in the array of delights.

But she is not tasting the white chocolate mocha one morning and the cafe’s signature sandwich the next afternoon. 

Williams is working there. And she is enjoying the variety of tasks cafe owner Brandi Ulrey and her staff have offered her.

“I expected that I was going to have to wait tables or cook, but I do a little bit of everything,” Williams said. 

Heading into her senior year at Baker High School, Williams, 17, is gaining her first work experience as a staffer at the cafe.

Once she finishes high school, Williams plans to enroll at the Milan Institute in Boise, where she will take classes to become a medical assistant.

Even though most would agree that medical assisting and kitchen work draw few parallels, Ulrey has attempted to teach Williams skills that will translate to any line of work.

She has emphasized solid customer service skills, explained the power of wearing a full-fledged smile and has even helped break Williams from the shyness she displayed during her initial days on the job.

Ulrey has also helped to train and mentor the Cafe’s second youth worker, Fantasia Paschal, who was on vacation when Williams was interviewed last week.

Unlike Williams, Paschal enjoys more steady duties, and has especially taken a liking to making coffee drinks.

“She will have a marketable skill,” Ulrey said. “So she can have a job in any coffee shop and I’m glad I had a hand in that.”

Ulrey calls both youth “hard-working girls” and applauds the program.  

“We love it from an employer’s perspective,” she said. “It’s really a great program.”