The Basics
How long have you been at City Light? I started at City Light in January 2019.
Division: Transmission & Distribution Field Operations
Tell us about your role. I work in the underground residential distribution (URD) division at the North Service Center as a Journeyman Lineworker. URD crews build, repair, and maintain all underground electrical systems within City Light’s service area. As a field worker, I’m part of a five-man crew. Our work often includes juggling new construction installations, responding to outages, surveying future jobs for engineers, and working with customers. Our work is done at all hours, during inclement weather, 365 days a year. Seattle is still growing at a rapid pace; there doesn’t seem to be an end to construction and development. We’ll be there to bring power to our customers.
What inspired you to pursue a career as a lineworker? I kind of just fell into it. One day, I decided to make a career change. I was looking for something stable that could help me meet my future financial goals without taking on additional debt. I also wasn’t interested in going back to school. I started looking into line work since that’s what my father did, and that’s where I began learning about the industry and the occupation.
Can you walk us through the training and preparation needed to become a journeyman lineworker? Every company is different, but typically, you’ll spend roughly four years as an apprentice. During that time, you work your way through each step learning different aspects of the trade. It’s important to ask questions, review your work and find out what you could have done better. Be prepared to do lots of climbing on tall poles and to be comfortable working at heights.
Like in any industry, work hard, learn from everyone, be humble, pay attention to the work and to the people who are trying to teach you. It’s electricity; respect it because it doesn’t care who you are or who your family is.
Background
Hometown: Lake Stevens, Wash.
Discipline/Trade of study: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers lineman apprenticeship
Tell us about your family/pets: I married my wife, Janet, in 2023, and we have one dog. My father was an overhead crew chief and retired from City Light in 2014.
Just for fun
What can you talk about for hours? Food and cooking. I love to cook. I worked in Seattle’s restaurant industry (Tulio, Barrio, and others) before I changed careers. Cooking is still one of my passions. Coworkers sometimes will ask me questions about food or what restaurants I’d recommend and that’s one of those little things that put a smile on my face. My favorite thing to make at home… pasta anything.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Work-wise, I have no plans to change positions. But anything can happen, right? Outside of work, I go through phases of hobbies and “new” things I want to learn. Hopefully, I’ll be better at the things that are meaningful to me 10 years from now. I took up learning piano a year ago, and it’s been a lot of fun, but taxing mentally. I’d like to be able to play at an intermediate level by then and not have to think so hard about training muscle memory. I’ve been putting off learning how to brew beer. Hopefully, I can knock that out soon. Also, it would be cool to be serving meals for people out of my house.
What’s your favorite way to relax and unwind? My wife and I love eating around Seattle. We’re constantly trying all the new places opening and still patronizing our favorites. We recently traveled to San Francisco to eat at Dominique Crenn’s Atelier Crenn, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, for my wife’s 39th birthday. And, it was one of the best restaurant experiences we’ve had to date. So, we can check that one off the bucket list.
What’s your favorite season, and why? Summer, of course. Not just for work, but Seattle summers are just amazing. A whole other world opens up when there’s good weather in the Pacific Northwest. Plus, that’s when camping season is. We love to camp.