Adams Co. high schools to highlight career opportunities
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 months, 1 week AGO
Othello High School students visit with potential employers at the Adams County Development Council’s Career Showcase last year. This year’s event at OHS will be Oct. 16.
COURTESY PHOTO/ADAMS COUNTY DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL
Students talk with a recruiter at Lind-Ritzville High School last year at the Career Showcase. This year’s event at LRHS is Oct. 9.
The career showcase features enough potential employers that the gym won’t hold them all, said Lind-Ritzville Principal Kevin Terris, and the event extends into the parking lot.
Most of the vendors recruiting at the Adams County Development Council Career Showcase offer snacks or swag at their booths, to grab students’ attention and keep their name in front of the students.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | October 3, 2025 3:30 AM
RITZVILLE — A pair of career showcases this month will let Adams County high school students see what future they may have in their own backyard.
“I want to show our students that you can stay in the area and have the jobs that you've always thought you wanted, or expose you to jobs you didn't know existed, or just motivate all of our students to see there's more opportunity out there than I think we all realize,” said Adams County Development Council Director Kyle Niehenke. “Even in a small community, there's more jobs out there.”
The showcases will be held at Lind-Ritzville High School on Oct. 9 and at Othello High School on Oct. 16. The event at Lind-Ritzville will be two and a half hours, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; the Othello High School event, having more students to serve, will rotate grades in and out from just before 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Students from Washtucna, Sprague, Odessa and Harrington high schools are also invited to the Lind-Ritzville showcase, Niehenke said.
Each student is given a passport, a sheet of paper with their information on one side and a list of exhibitors on the other, Niehenke said. Every time a student has a conversation with a potential employer, they get a stamp on the passport. Those passports are turned in at the end of the event and entered into drawings for raffle prizes.
Niehenke has 36 vendors lined up for Lind-Ritzville, and another 50-plus for Othello, he said. About 350 students take part in the showcase at Lind-Ritzville, and about 1,400 in Othello.
Adams County is a mostly agricultural county of about 21,000 people, which presents challenges when it comes to maintaining a stable workforce, Niehenke said.
“If you’re (reacting) to your workforce, you’re going to be behind your competition,” he said. “(We need) proactive attempts at (building the) workforce, especially in a small community, where you can have maybe some long-term plans. Some of our vendors (say), ‘I'm not hiring right now, but I know I'm going to have some gaps in two, three, four years.’ It's casting a wide net; if I can inspire 10 of those kids and five of them ultimately come back to us interested in a couple years, that goes a long way to making sure that (companies) have their workforce needs (met) for the future.”
The benefit goes both ways, said Lind-Ritzville High School principal Kevin Terris.
“Students (leave) this showcase with many opportunities that they (weren’t) aware of when they started their day,” Terris said. “They get face-to-face with people who are going to possibly be on the other end of a hiring committee. They get to know the names and faces of people that they're interested in working for in the future. It also gives them a really great exposure to a lot of the opportunities that Adams County offers.”
Niehenke went to high school in Ephrata, he said, and when he was in school, things were very different.
“We just didn’t do this,” he said. “Everyone just said ‘Go to college and figure it out.’ (That’s) a really expensive way to figure out (whether a particular career path is for them) … (We can) expose our employers to potential workforce candidates, and have a pipeline established of future workers, because retirements are not slowing down, and we need people to backfill those jobs.”
Students talk with a recruiter at Lind-Ritzville High School last year at the Career Showcase. This year’s event at LRHS is Oct. 9.
The career showcase features enough potential employers that the gym won’t hold them all, said Lind-Ritzville Principal Kevin Terris, and the event extends into the parking lot.
Most of the vendors recruiting at the Adams County Development Council Career Showcase offer snacks or swag at their booths, to grab students’ attention and keep their name in front of the students.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Quincy National Night Out scales down
QUINCY — Quincy’s National Night Out was more compact this year, which worked out well, said QPD Sgt. Joe Westby, who’s in charge of event planning for the Quincy Police Department. “National Night Out is a big event, and the fact that we’re able to shrink it up is like a breath of fresh air,” Westby said. “If you're always doing the same thing, it's kind of nice to switch things up and see how it works.” National Night Out took place Thursday on the block of C Street next to the police station, a shift from previous years when it was held at Lauzier Park. The smaller space meant fewer emergency vehicles for children to explore, but it also meant less walking for attendees. Grant County Fire District 5 brought a fire truck, and the Grant County Sheriff’s Office had a patrol boat. Renew, the Grant County behavioral health agency, had a booth and so did Quincy Partnership for Youth. Veterans Operation Creation sang the national anthem, and the Quincy Animal Shelter brought kittens that piled over each other making friends with passersby. As before, the QPD served grilled hot dogs.
Quincy Police retirements leave big shoes to fill
QUINCY — There are some big shoes to fill at the Quincy Police Department. “We’re losing 48 years of experience between them,” Quincy Police Chief Ryan Green said at the retirement party for Capt. Jorge Trujillo and Det. Damon Powell Thursday. Trujillo, who grew up in Sunnyside, has been with QPD for 19 years, he said, coming on as a patrol officer fresh out of the military. From there he served as a field training officer, a detective and finally captain. “I consider him my left-hand man,” Green said. “He runs the operations side of the house … He knows the agency very well, and he knows the community.” Trujillo has some projects around the house to tackle now that he’s retired, he said.
Big fun on a small scale
Wheat Land Communities’ Fair opens Thursday
RITZVILLE — The Wheat Land Communities’ Fair isn’t as big or as flashy as some of the county fairs around central Washington, but the folks who keep it going like it just the way it is. “It’s somewhere you can go and get an old-time traditional feeling, and you’re comfortable letting your kids roam the grounds and experience all that it has to offer,” said Board Member Lori Williams. “It’s more of a feeling than (one) specific thing,” The fair starts Thursday in Ritzville and runs through Sunday. Starting Friday, the 56th Ritzville Rodeo will take place alongside the fair at the rodeo grounds. This year the entertainment budget was expanded, Williams said, to be able to offer more fun that’s covered by the cost of admission. For the kids, there’s face painting, balloon art, Lego crafts, races, contests and games. Children can also ride on a little train towed around the fairgrounds behind a tractor.