Jobs, houses, and cars oh my!: The Stuarts move to Klamath Falls.

Jobs

Since graduation I, heavily supported by my wife and extended family, have looked for a primary care job. Being an immediate results type of person, at times I became discouraged at only seeing a few advertised jobs, not receiving as many callbacks as I wanted or as soon as I wanted (some companies took over 40 days to contact me), and not getting offers after interviews. Wendy, her siblings, my parents, and many extended family remained optimistic that I would find a job that fit. None of us really expected that job to appear in a small town in Southwest Oregon.

Klamath Tribal Health and Family Services

One day as I left from teaching at the University of Utah I received a random phone call from a recruiter for a position in Oregon. The recruiter described the position as a primary care clinic in small town serving the Native American population; the recruiter also mentioned that up to this point the entire provider staff consisted of women and being a man looking for a job provided a small bonus. I shrugged, and thought, "Doesn't hurt?" and gave the recruiter permission to connect me to the clinic.

As I progressed through the hiring process it startled me how much the job intrigued me.  The clinic has six providers, so there would be a variety of other providers to help or bounce ideas off. The leadership impressed me with their vision and plans for the future; as well as their honesty in what difficulties the clinic and their patients have faced and are facing. Having a history in public health and health education, I have always considered the education and health prevention side of primary care as important as the diagnosing and prescribing. Discussions with the leadership and provider teams led me to conclude that not only was health education a component of the clinics services but a component that received heavy emphasis.

When asked about my ideal location to work I wax eloquent about clinics built on the primary care medical home model. In this type of primary care clinic, patient's prevention, wellness, mental, emotional, acute, and chronic needs are addressed by an in-house or closely working together group of interdisciplinary team members such as medical providers, pharmacists, nutritionists, social workers, educators, and care coordinators. Instead of working as "silos" in individual officers the team members work as a collaborative for the health of the patients. Klamath Tribal Health is organized to be a medical home with an in-house team of different providers. 

Basically, the Klamath Tribal Health and Family Services is almost as close to a dream job that I can get. I rejoiced when the hiring committee offered me the job with a generous salary and benefits package. 

Even dream jobs have drawbacks. And, this job's drawback is rather large. The clinic is more than ten hours away from where most of Wendy's and my families live (and the cousins that Andrew, Cameron, and Spencer love). This led to a lot of discussion, a spur of the moment trip to Klamath Falls, lots of prayer, and a long list of pros and cons. Eventually Wendy and I decided that the Klamath Tribal Health and Family Services fit our needs. I start at the clinic on August 16th.

House

Of course, it's hard to have a job without a place to stay. Wendy has read research that supports that idea that living within five to ten minutes of the worksite makes a big difference in happiness. The Wellness center that I will work at sits in a small town of 700 people called Chiloquin. Many of the providers and staff who work at the clinic live in the larger town of Klamath Falls (population just above 40K) which is a thirty minute drive south of the clinic. We decided to take advantage of some time in Chiloquin and Klamath Falls to look for houses after my on-site job interview but before the job was offered. 

The search for houses in Chiloquin and Klamath Falls found some oddities and quirks to the housing market in the area. It appears that renting is either not-profitable or too difficult because it is almost non-existent. Our original intention to find a rental house to live in while working at the wellness center died shortly into the search. Zillow, craigslist, and the local newspaper showed that if you want more than a one bedroom you'd be paying upwards of $1,200. And that money didn't necessarily translate into a neighborhood you wanted to let you kids run around and play in. Reluctantly, we turned to looking to buy a house rather than rent.

The original hunt did not bear a lot of fruit. During the trip for the on-site interview Wendy and my parents looked at some of the houses that intrigued us from our online searches. What they found when visiting the houses...was less intriguing. Before heading out of town after the interview we did accept the help of the real estate agent suggested by the staff at the clinic. She showed us several more houses with rotting retaining walls and decks, houses without any air conditioners or furnaces, houses modeled on what could only be described as a mouse maze, and houses with no yards at all (the town is built on the sides of the mountains). We felt discouraged to say the least.

Finally, the real estate agent suggest a final stop at house that she thought we would like. She did clarify that access to the house required traveling 10 minutes away from Klamath Falls (20 minutes from Chiloquin) on a gravel, but maintained, road. The real estate agent explained that a couple has started to build the house but divorced and foreclosed before the house finished. The bank finished the house and was now selling it. The real estate agent made sure to mention the many "positives" that she loved about the house including lots of windows and natural light, hardwood floors in all rooms, a deck that wrapped around 3/4 of the house, and the large almost 3 acre of ponderosa plot the house was built on. Given our experiences with previous houses I looked at the house with a certain amount of skepticism....until we saw it, walked through it, and wandered the property.  The real estate agent's description had been accurate and more. 

For all the previous houses I had a pit in my stomach; suddenly I felt warm and fuzzy. Wendy walked around the house and property and then whispered to me, "I love it!" Until then Wendy was convinced about the wonders of my job, but not about having our family live in Oregon. For Wendy, seeing this house made it so she was willing for me to accept the job if it came up.  

The job offer came a week later on a Thursday evening (around 4:30 pm). Immediately Wendy and I started to plan a trip back to Klamath Falls. For me, I wanted to go look at the "nice" house as well as investigate other houses we had found on real estate sites. Wendy wanted to go back to Klamath Falls to see it in a less theoretical light and see if she could really live there. The "original" plan was to wait a week and then head up to Klamath Falls to look at houses July 13th. But by the following day we realized that we both had family in town from Arizona and Africa so we'd miss precious time with them if we waited. So mid car ride doing errands we made plans to go to Klamath that day. Wendy and the boys continued taking care of the errands and Ben went home to hurriedly pack bags. By 7:00 PM Friday the 7th Wendy, Spencer, and I headed out for Klamath after dropping Andrew and Cameron off at Brian and Dejah's house to play with cousins in Layton for a three day sleepover. 

This impromptu and sudden decision to drop everything and go to Klamath Falls ended up being fortuitous. None of the other houses we had found or the realtor suggested fit our needs or had a yard and a house. We ended up returning to the original house we had liked, but now we knew why it was head and shoulders better than the other places in town. Unfortunately, more people thought "our" house looked perfect and had decided to make offers for it. In the end two other people put in offers and the mortgage company asked us to submit our "highest and best offers." It took more than a week and lots of calls with the real estate agent to have our offer officially accepted. We are now "almost" house owners. 

Of course, the house that we soon will own is fifteen to twenty minutes away from both my work site and the nearest town. This led to the next concern; we only have one car.

Cars

For the past four years Wendy and I have managed to function with only one car. Between the mass transit system and Wendy being willing to wake up early to drive me to and from work we managed to make it through my bachelor and doctorate program with one car. We quickly realized that with a house basically in middle of the forest that it would not be wise to trap Wendy and the kids alone without transportation while I worked. Additionally, although we love the house, access to it requires driving on a maintained gravel road. We don't know just how maintained that road is during the winter so it seemed wise to have a vehicle that could handle snow and off-roading conditions. A description our great Honda Fit does not match. Wendy started investigating sport utility vehicles. 

Eventually, my Father discovered about our car search. Within a few days he had contacted a friend from work who as a hobby buys, refurbishes, and resells vehicles. Completely by chance my dad's friend had a 2002 Toyota Sequoia that he had recently completed work on. Wendy, Debbie, my Dad, I, and a "car smart" cousin Holden visiting from Minnesota headed out to investigate. Interestingly this hobbyist mechanic does not specialize. On his lot we saw a sports car, a sedan, a sport utility vehicle, and even a stretch limo. We focused on the sport utility vehicle. 

My dad's friend Darwin referred to the Sequoia as a "30-footer." From 30 feet away the car looks amazing; as you get closer you can see that the previous owner had a teenager who dented, scraped, or dinged pretty much every panel of the truck. Nothing serious or hugely obvious but present. Fortunately the rest of the car seemed to be in good shape. At one point it seems to have been a "VERY NICE" car. It had an operating sunroof, heated leather seats, automatic climate control, lots of buttons, tablets attached to the front two seats connected to a DVD system, a six-disc CD player, and a fair amount of other amenities. Most importantly, it drove well and as a refurbished car the price couldn't be beat. Wendy and I now drive around a "new" Toyota Sequoia.

So much room!

So many buttons!

Summary

In summary, in the past three weeks we have been offered and accepted a job, found and submitted an offer on a house, and obtained a "newish" car. How's that for life changing?