March 2009 NetWork 7

Making Connections appears in Superintendent Jorge Carrasco’s weekly inWeb messageto 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 canread 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 ConnectionsBy Roberto Bonaccorso, publications specialist, Communications and Public Affairs

Debi has beenwith Seattle CityLight since 1987,when she washired as a temporaryworker in thecarpentry shop.