Beth Kornick lives to add sparkle in life.

Throughout her life she’s been on the move both in where she’s lived and jobs she’s had, which played a part in shaping her personable nature.

Since her family moved out of South Dakota when she was 2 years old, she’s lived in Alaska, Montana, Arizona, Kentucky and Georgia. The road of life would eventually lead her back to Montana where she lives with her husband, Mark, and their two children, Escher and Lilah, at the historic Flathead Lake Salmon Fish Hatchery residence in Somers.

“I think that’s actually formed who I am a lot because I was always the new person,” Kornick said.

“I can see a lot of perspectives. I’ve lived in a lot of places with different, you know, communities, types of people, ranging the gamut from conservative to liberal, small town to city and I think I can acclimate easily and I’m very open and accepting of others,” she said.

These character traits became the hallmark of finding success in customer service positions.

“I enjoy when I can help somebody and make their life a little easier,” Kornick said.

For the past six years, Kornick has worked as the administrative assistant to the superintendent of Kalispell Public Schools. Working out of the district central office, Kornick is usually the first person to greet visitors and finds satisfaction in helping others find the information they need.

“I’ve always loved that part of my job,” she said.

Her background also includes two years as the district enrollment clerk and substitute coordinator,where she built relationships with staff in different buildings.

Ever since working at an ice cream parlor at 14, Kornick has worked in customer service in some capacity. By the time she was a high school senior, she started working at a bank as part of a class program.

Moving between states was a yearly occurrence for her and her four siblings following her parents’ divorce. She said they were given the option of where they wanted to live. At the beginning, the options were Lewistown, Montana, and Alaska.

“We all decided we would live a year with mom and a year with dad,” Kornick said.

After graduating high school in Arizona, where her mother lived at the time, Kornick didn’t know what she wanted to do. In taking the next step, she decided to enroll at Arizona State University as a fine arts major. In retrospect, it may have been a step taken too soon for her at the time.

“ASU was way too big for me and I don’t think I was ready to go to school,” Kornick said.

She needed a change. One of her siblings was living in Lewistown and encouraged her to move back, but at 19, Kornick had come to enjoy what a metropolitan area offered.

Yet family, and Montana, has its way of drawing people back.

After moving back to Lewistown, Kornick started working in a daycare center because she loved children. Growing up, foster children were part of their family and she started babysitting around 12. This interest led her to pursue an early childhood education degree at Montana State University with an emphasis on special education in Bozeman when fate would have it that she would meet her future husband.

“Two weeks before leaving for school I met my husband,” Kornick said. “I was actually taking my daycare kids on a field trip to the fish hatchery in Lewistown [where he worked].”

She went off to college and the couple continued a long-distance relationship for the next six months. The urgency to be with each other in person didn’t come until after Kornick, who was taking a sign language class, returned from a two-week trip out of the country with a college group that signed theater performances for deaf communities.

Unfortunately, it was a rocky trip. Kornick said she became very ill and there was a mugging, among other life-altering events.

“This was before internet and cellphones, so I had little to no communication with my family and it was really scary. When I got back, I found out my boyfriend was also really sick. We decided we just didn’t want to do the long-distance thing anymore,” she said.

After weighing different options about what to do, the couple ultimately decided she would drop out of school and move to Lewistown to get married.

While she now questions if dropping out of school was the best decision, at the time, being together was what mattered most in her life.

She tapped back into her customer-service background in going returning to the workforce. In the ’90s she managed a coffee shop that she eventually renamed Java Betti’s.

“Betti is sort of a nickname I have,” Kornick said, recalling that it stems from a newspaper misprint of her name in their wedding announcement. She was also a snowboarder where females in the sport were referred to as “Board Bettys.”

“We were open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. We wanted a place where people could congregate all day and a place for kids to come after school,” she said. “We had live music, and board games and kids could bring their own CDs.”

When the young couple and their first child, Escher, moved to Georgia where her husband took a new position, Montana wasn’t far from their mind.

“We thought it would be a while before the position opened up in Montana that he wanted to take,” Kornick said about her husband.

That dream came to fruition within three years, and in 2007, the Kornick family, which had grown to include Lilah, moved to Somers

Eventually, she sought a position with Kalispell Public Schools to be on a similar schedule with her children and landed the enrollment clerk and substitute coordinator position, which led to her current position.

“Now I get to help all the schools,” she said. “And you know, the programs that we have, and the teachers that we have, and the things that they’re doing are amazing. I feel pretty lucky to support that,” Kornick said.

With a penchant for helping others, she became one of the founders of Women Who Wine of the Flathead, a philanthropic social group. She also serves on the board of Rotary Club of Kalispell, a service organization, and is the vice president of Flathead CARE, a nonprofit focusing on drug and alcohol prevention and youth empowerment of middle and high school students.

Outside of work and volunteering, Kornick enjoys spending time with family and friends, whether that’s floating the river, shopping, laughing or raising a glass in a toast. In her spare time, she lets her creative side shine in an online blog and boutique called “A Sparkling Mess,” where she gives her take on life’s ups, downs and the moments in between.

“Life is messy — throw some glitter on it and make it shine,” Kornick said, smiling.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.