Superwoman by Ryan Martin

Single mother of two young daughters, Christie Peterson, braves the early morning hours everyday to embark on a four mile run. Running she says, is the only time her brain has to be clear on all the moving pieces in her life. It is not easy balancing a new business, raising kids and finding time for herself, but somehow, Christie does all of this with a smile and willingness to share her story.

The ability and the need to juggle multiple areas of her life at once is something she says she discovered within herself after her divorce from her husband early last year.

“I knew that this was a critical point in my life regarding my daughters,” Peterson said. “They could either see mommy be sad and crying everyday, or they could have a strong, determined mommy to look up to everyday, and that is where I decided to make a change.”

In early 2014, Peterson and her girls Horizon and Emily, ages 6 and 8, had their seemingly normal lives crumble when Petersons husband filed for divorce. Peterson claims she went into panic mode, thinking about how she would provide for her girls. Outside of being a stay at home mother and volunteering at an elementary school, Peterson had no formal occupation. After realizing she wanted to make a life for herself, Peterson decided attempt to turn her passion for baking into a legacy and a form of income.

Cara’s Confections is the name of the chocolate company that Peterson is currently working with her sister Lauri Keanue, who she lives with and whose garage she is currently concocting her product in. Six months ago, Peterson made the decision that she never wanted to accept another dollar from her ex-husband, but knew that she needed a solid plan in place before she cut off her spousal and child support, which is her only form of income. That plan was her baking company.

Cara’s Confections is the name that Peterson chose for the baking company, as a nod to her mother who passed down the baking skills she possesses today. Pulling from old recopies that were passed down from her mother, many that have been in the family for decades, Peterson began to merge the traditional recopies with her modern spin.

“It took me a while to get the hang of making chocolates and caramels because I was used to baking cakes and pies, but the chocolates and caramels are such a niche market right now I wanted to capitalize,” Peterson said about making the switch from baking to her current creations.

Without rent to pay or any major bills, Peterson uses most of her spousal support for trying to get her business off the ground. Peterson says that while she has spent most of her money on baking equipment and testing products out at local coffee shops and farmers markets, she knows that in order to start making an income with the business, she needs to spend money to make money.

“I haven’t made any money yet from any of my product because I give out all my samples for free to try to build a client base. Once I can hone in on what will sell the best, then I will start to actually sell what I’m making, and shop it around to vendors,” Peterson said about her business process.

Peterson says that while making a profit from her confections is one of her biggest goals because it will allow her to be fully independent, making the best product is her main objective.

“Because I am doing this with just my sister right now, we are able to keep things how we want them in terms of what we create and how we create it. Using quality ingredients and switching up small things like the types of chocolate we use or adding interesting things like lavender extract to our caramels makes us feel like we are staying innovative and keeping it interesting,” Peterson said.

Peterson says that testing and creating product consumes most of her day while her daughters are at school. One product that she is particularly proud of is her rose ginger caramels. Made from dried rose pedals, candied ginger, sugar, honey butter and cream, Peterson credits her mother as her source of inspiration for her recopies that aren’t normally made.

“My mom always used to let us bake whatever we wanted. If we wanted to make pizza brownies or pudding cake, she let our imaginations roam free. The only rule that she had was whatever we created, we had to eat, which has helped me in the long run not get too crazy with what I create,” said Peterson.

While she is adamant that her sister Lauri is just as big of a player in the creation of the company, Keanue makes it clear who the real champion is. “After the divorce Christie and the girls moved in with me and we ever since that day, she has been growing this idea, and I have been her biggest supporter, and I would do anything for her and her girls at any minute.”

The next step for the business after getting the product ready for market, is a website, which has been an unforeseen challenge for Peterson and Keanue.

“Something simple like making a website for our product has been a pain because neither of us are good with technology, and we don’t really know who to reach out to for things like that, so that is a perfect example of this business teaching us new things everyday,” Keanue said.

Confections don’t occupy all of Peterson’s time however; she is also dedicated to giving back to the community. Peterson became involved with volunteering through her best friend of 10 years, Whitney Herber, who works at the school full time that Peterson volunteers at. Peterson sites Herber as her source biggest source of support outside of her family and looks to Herber to help her balance the demands of trying to grow a business with taking time for herself.

“Christie is the most positive person that I have in my life and everyone feels her energy when they are around her,” Herber said. “She is one of the toughest people I know but you would never guess that she has been through some of the things that she has from the outside she gives off. She always has a smile on her face, and so do her girls, and how your kids act are a pretty good indication of what type of person the parent is.”

Like Herber said, how children act is a good indication of what type of person their parent is, and Horizon and Emily’s smiles are hard to miss when they are around their mother. After taking a few minutes to think of a word that they would use to describe their mother, it was a unanimous answer of Superwoman.

Christie Peterson

“Our mom is Superwoman because she takes us to do so many things and also works really hard,” Horizon said. “We always get to spend a lot of time with her and we get to help her a lot with the candies she makes. She also teaches us a lot of things like how to be nice and respectful.”

Getting up at the crack of dawn may seem like strenuous work with two young kids and a new business. Christie Peterson says it is her two girls that make everything she does worth it. When it comes to her future, Peterson has a clear idea of what she wants for herself.

“In one year, I would hope that my business was finally in some cute little store downtown and that my website is up and running so that I can provide my girls anything that they want. I would also like to see a ring from my boyfriend, not to pressure him at all. But most of all, I just want to see myself as happy as I am now because I am the happiest I have ever been in my life.”

Christie Peterson

The Print Shop is on a Roll

What do rubber chickens, a life-size Darth Vader cutout, birthday cards, collapsible Christmas trees, and your Core 150 exams have in common? Not much, if you’ve never visited Whitworth University’s print shop.

But those who have made their way to the office on the eastern most side of campus and stepped into behind the industrial grey metal doors know that those seemingly random accessories each sit on a shelf beyond the endless stacks of mail and printer paper.

From the outside, the workspace located behind Hawthorne Hall may not look like it has much to offer, but with wall-to-wall windows flooding the inside to the warehouse with natural light, rows of current projects, and goofy props and conversation pieces scattered around, one can conclude that there’s more happening here than sorting mail and bulletins.

It’s clear that the life of the print shop is not in the business of the whirring printers, but the staff who make the it all happen. On top of accepting 40-50 print orders a day, (more than 150 orders a day in the first few weeks of school), print shop expert Tom Roll will tell you, “One of our specialties is having a good time!”

Roll’s official title is pressman, but his co-workers call him the man who makes the magic happen. Roll has worked in printing services at Whitworth for 12 years, and has built a reputation for himself both professionally and as a caring member of the Whitworth community.

He is known around campus for his ability to take on unique printing projects that seem unmanageable, such as the George Whitworth life-size cutout that students enjoyed taking pictures with in the HUB last month. Folks outside the pinecone curtain know Roll, as well. “There’s one really sweet elderly couple who has come to me pretty faithfully for a number of years to get their family Christmas newsletter printed, and we always look forward to doing work for them,” Roll says. Several Whitworth alumni remember Roll and come to him for special jobs like wedding invitations and graduation or baby announcements.

Other print shops in the area occasionally reach out to Whitworth for assistance when they don’t have the right equipment for a large job.

“A lot of people reward us with chocolate,” Roll says, “but really it just feels nice to provide a great service to those around you.”

On the rare occasion that the print shop has a slow day, staff practice magic tricks for one another to pass their spare time, but it’s not disappearing quarters or card tricks that keeps them coming to work every day.

“The magic we’re talking about is when sometimes someone will come in and say to us ‘I have a big project, and I need your help,’” Roll says. “They’ll ask for very specific ideas. ‘I want this and that and this and the other’, and we have to figure out how to make it all happen, and we do.”

He says the best part of the job is “coming up with creative ways to get jobs done for the people that come to see us here in the print shop.” Roll is in charge of offset printing, which works a bit differently than the regular copying and scanning that goes on in the rest of the print shop. Offset printing requires a printing press, which is better suited for high-volume jobs, and niche projects that require a bit of extra care.

Over the years, Roll has printed banners, posters, buttons, CD liners, decorations (like the life size character cutouts that greet visitors when you first walk in the room), and much more. With a goal to serve their clients well, the print shop staff, led by Roll’s creativity and skill, have helped thousands of projects successfully make their way to the hands of students, staff, faculty, and Spokane community members.

Allison Brier, the printing services assistant, works mainly with the copy jobs that come through the digital printers, affectionately named Ernie, Bert, and Big Bird after the Sesame Street characters.

Brier, who worked in the mail room before coming to work for printing services generally works to print out test and quizzes, syllabi, brochures, dorm newsletters, and other smaller projects.  But once in a while, an order will come through that she has no idea how the shop could complete.

“That’s when Tom will run over and start moving paper around, working with different methods and suggesting things I would have never thought of,” Biers says, “and soon enough I have the perfect project to hand back to a very happy member of campus.”

Senior Linnea Goold, who has been a part of the print shop crew for three years, says that she looks forward to work each day because of the time she gets to spend with the staff. She too has found herself a part of the playful banter and inside jokes the team throws around to keep a could-be monotonous job interesting.

One thing Goold cautioned as a student worker is to never reveal her likes or dislikes. Rumor has it a student worker years ago mentioned one day that she didn’t like unicorns, and to this day one can find unicorn pictures and props scattered around the work stations. Roll laughed at Goold’s recollection of the story, admitting that he was in on the trick.

“One day while she was busy with a printing job, I printed a 3-foot unicorn horn and taped it to the hood of the her truck,” said Roll. “Then I had to try not to laugh the rest of the day waiting for her to walk out and find it after her shift ended. Her face was priceless!”

Before graduating at this end of the semester, Goold says she looks forward to taking part in a print shop tradition and adding her own touch to the large colored campus map that hangs near the print shop entrance. Throughout the years, its become a rite of passage to add to the miniature improvements to the map. In that version of campus, water slides exists in the back 40, celebrities walk the Loop, and a yeti towers over one of the dorms.

Roll and the rest of the print shop staff know how to enjoy a busy work day, but in the midst of the banter and inside jokes, they deal professionally with dozens of orders coming in from students, staff, and faculty.

“We order about 7,800 reams of paper a year. At 500 sheets per ream that’s over 3 million sheets of paper to be printed, mailed, and shared with the rest of campus” says Bob Baker, manager of all printing and mailing services, whom the staffers call the Big Cheese. “A job like that requires a little fun”.

After 12 years of working for the print shop, Roll feels that his job is about far more than completing print and copy orders on time. He does enjoy being able to use his expertise and come up with creative ways to execute print projects, but Roll says the real reward comes from “the feeling you get doing good work for good people. That’s really what its all about for us.”