Month: March 2018

Thankfully, I’ve never been in a real active shooter situation.  But yesterday, we had an intense training exercise in a courtroom on the 5th floor of the CCB to help prepare our court personnel, our Court Security Office, and our SWAT team if the unthinkable happens – and I got to participate.  As a result, I know much better what to do and how to respond. Here are four things (among many) that stood out to me: First, in one scenario, there was a gunshot by the freight elevator. The sound from inside the courtroom was very muffled and therefore not very “alarming.”  It reminded me we must be alert for sounds and actions that are out of the ordinary, even if they are not loud. Second, I was in…

Last weekend I had the honor of co-hosting the Volunteer Recognition Brunch with Council Chair Doug Richardson. It’s amazing and inspiring to meet the hundreds of people who volunteer on behalf of programs they are passionate about. I told those in attendance that they would be asking themselves four questions by the end of our celebration: What do “biochar” and “cavy” mean? (biochar= a soil amendment made of charcoal; cavy = a South American rodent) I didn’t know we had a club that did that! (Meat Goat) I wonder how many lives that person has impacted? (Rev. Ogburn, our Volunteer of the Year, has donated 7,000 hours helping a countless number of elderly residents) What would happen to Pierce County if our community didn’t have these people as volunteers? (We…

One of my favorite quotes is from the renowned physicist, Albert Einstein: “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”  I could not agree more and work hard to reflect this in my life.  I am naturally curious, which is why my visits with County employees often take much longer than scheduled.  I like to learn what our people do and how they do it! However, I am always intentionally trying to learn new things and challenge my current perspectives – basically to grow personally.  It shows up in the books I read (currently “The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945”), the classes I take (completed the Coast Guard Captain’s Course last December), and podcasts I listen to daily (“The Bible in One Year” and yesterday…

Have you ever watched one of those “house flipping” shows on TV?  You know, the ones where over the course of 30 minutes stars like Chip and Joanna Gaines renovate an old decrepit house and a disaster of a yard and turn it into a beautiful country home with gazebo and garden swing! Well, it takes them more than 30 minutes but our Code Enforcement team has some pretty impressive “before” and “after” successes of its own. (more…)

For thousands of years, quilting has brought people together.  Spanning centuries and cultures, groups of people have gathered to make quilts to stay warm, to preserve their history and to decorate their homes.  It is an important part of our American heritage.  My grandmother saved empty, brightly colored feed sacks, as did her friends, and they gathered together on a regular basis to turn those used feed sacks into quilts.  But what, you might wonder, does quilting have to do with the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office? Jan is a long-time resident of Puyallup and a quilter.  She has had poor eyesight since childhood, but, as an adult, she was facing progressive vision loss that would eventually lead to blindness.  She found herself unable to drive or read, and was…