1. March 2009 NetWork 7
Making Connections appears in Superintendent Jorge Carrasco’s weekly inWeb message
to employees. The feature profiles employees – their work and their lives off the job.
NetWork will now publish some of those stories so that as many people as possible can
read about their fascinating co-workers.
Don’t let her stature and good cheer fool you – Debi Abel is
one tough cookie. She once shot a bear for food. She built her
own home from scratch, including the wiring, plumbing and digging
a septic tank system by hand.
For her first eight years in Washington state, she lived in a shell
of a home with no running water, no heat and a chimney pipe that
dripped coffee-can loads of creosote each day. Water for baths was
heated in a camp stove.
And then there is her job. Debi is a maintenance laborer at the
Ross Powerhouse in Newhalem, where she works on the generator
rotors. That means getting inside the machines “like a miner,” she
says, to remove soot from the brakes.
Debi has been with Seattle City Light since 1987, when she
was hired as a temporary worker in the carpentry shop. She was
hired permanently in 1988 as part of an SCL logging crew.
“We died in the heat and froze in the winter, shared laughter as
well as tears. We were a family. We have a love and bond that will
never leave any of us,” Debi says of her experiences as a logger.
Debi also worked with the Skagit plumbing, paint shop and
boat crews. She particularly
enjoyed her work as a deck-
hand, helping people on the
boat tours of the Skagit proj-
ect.
Debi is originally from
Placentia, Calif., near
Fullerton. She left that state
in 1978 during the gas and
water shortage, seeking a
greener place with reliable
water, good hiking and fish-
ing. She ended up in
Washington after exploring
the map as far as Illinois and
Arkansas.
Debi has four boys,
three of them all grown up.
Like her, she says, they have
all been taught to set ambi-
tious goals, and to be handy
and self-sufficient.
Making Connections
By Roberto Bonaccorso, publications specialist, Communications and Public Affairs
Debi has been
with Seattle City
Light since 1987,
when she was
hired as a
temporary
worker in the
carpentry shop.