PORT HADLOCK — Two recent Port Townsend High School graduates have landed summer jobs close to home, working as interns at the Jefferson County Public Utility District.
“We are between where energy is created and where it’s dispersed,” said Raven Pope, a 2013 graduate now seeking an electrical engineering degree at Western Washington University.
“We see where everything comes from, and where it goes.”
Pope, 21, and Colin Coker, 18, a 2015 graduate who is studying mechanical engineering at Washington State University, are performing a variety of tasks.
“Some days we’ll spend 10 hours doing paperwork, others we will spend 10 hours out in the field working on transformers,” Coker said.
“I have been able to use a lot of the skills I learned this year in school, like programming in Excel and using different CAD programs.”
Pope and Coker receive $13 an hour for three 10-hour days per week and never know what they will be doing when they arrive at work in the morning.
Because the local PUD is smaller than a municipal utility, the pair fills in where needed.
On one occasion, the pair went through 15 boxes of paperwork searching out deeds having to do with a disputed easement.
PUD Manager Jim Parker said the interns were hired to help with paperwork and whatever tasks within their skill set need to be done.
Parker said it would be several years before they could return as full employees due to education, licensing and experience requirements.
The intern program has been used once, in 2014, when the PUD hired an accounting major who helped to set up accounts, Parker said.