AeroTek opens Moses Lake office
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 weeks AGO
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. | June 4, 2026 3:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — The ribbon-cutting at the new AeroTek office in Moses Lake on Monday brought Traci Thomas full-circle.
“Having come from Moses Lake … being able to come back to my home and my community with my four kids and have the people I trust most by my side is super important,” Thomas said.
Thomas moved to California to take a promotion with AeroTek a number of years ago, she said, and now will serve as AeroTek’s representative in Moses Lake.
AeroTek, a staffing and recruitment company with locations around the world, had a small satellite office in Moses Lake at one time to serve the staffing needs of a single client, Genie Industries, said Director of Market Operations Chris Lombroia, but that closed years ago. AeroTek has served Moses Lake from offices in Spokane Valley and Kennewick since then, he said, but the Moses Lake office will enable the company to have a more immediate presence for those clients.
“Over the years, we noticed that for us to be successful here, we needed a local presence,” Lombroia said. “And with Traci coming back to the market, it made all the sense in the world to actually open an office here.”
The Moses Lake market is growing in importance, Lombroia said, particularly in the aviation field.
“We have a specialized division that works with aerospace and aviation companies,” Lombroia said. “So, we’ve supported them through boom and bust cycles. We’re seeing a definite uptick in opportunity here.”
“Manufacturing is really busy in this area,” she said. “We have tons of manufacturing companies that we partner with. And then the skilled trades like electricians and plumbers are always needed.”
For now, the Moses Lake office will be a one-woman operation, with representatives from the other eastern Washington locations helping out as needed, Thomas said.
“At the end of the day, my goal is to partner with the best businesses and put the right people to work,” she said. “And I get to do that here in my hometown with my kids.”
AeroTek
1800 S. Clover Drive, Ste. 1
Moses Lake
360-813-9810
Open 8-5 Monday-Friday
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Garred Road Fire sees no growth, two other local fires contained
COULEE CITY — Fire crews are still working on containing the Garred Road Fire, near Coulee City, which has seen very little growth, remaining at nearly 3,400 acres and is around 61 percent contained as of Thursday afternoon. According to the Southeast Washington Interagency I
Quincy store holds raffle for hospitalized employee
QUINCY — The raffle to help an ailing employee at Quincy Hardware and Lumber is booming. “When I first was trying to brainstorm what we could do about this (Wednesday) morning, I thought, (maybe) we can raise $1,000 to help with travel expenses and them being out of town so long,” said owner Tina Stetner Thursday. “Well, the first couple of hours that the store was open (Thursday), I think we'd already made $1,250.” Charles Rounds, who has worked at Quincy Hardware for about five years, was struck last week with cauda equina syndrome, a rare but critical condition in which some of the nerves at the base of the spine stop transmitting messages to the lower part of the body, according to the American Association of Neurosurgeons. In Rounds’ case, the nerves had stopped telling his bladder to empty, causing waste to back up and his kidneys to fail. He went to the emergency room at Quincy Valley Medical Center, which sent him on to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in the Tri-Cities, Reiman said.
120-acre fire burns structures by I-90
MOSES LAKE — Nobody was harmed in a wildfire alongside Interstate 90 Wednesday afternoon, according to Grant County Fire District 5. At about 3:45 p.m., Adams County Fire District 2 firefighters were dispatched to a fire, dubbed the Schrag Fire, at a farm residence on Schrag Road at milepost 194 of the eastbound lanes of I-90, GCFD 5 Battalion Chief Travis Svilar said. As of 6:30 p.m., the fire had grown to 120 acres. ACFD 2 called for mutual aid from neighboring departments and for air support, Svilar said. Two scooper planes and two helicopters were on the scene. The fire’s forward progress to the east was stopped by 6 p.m., Svilar said. The freeway remained open the entire time.