More than 100,000 local, state and federal employees are represented by AFT Public Employees. The division is by far the most diverse among the AFT’s five constituency groups, with members working in more than 4,000 job titles. Despite the diversity in jobs, one thing members working at all levels of government have in common is that they are all Real Pros whose work serves the public good.

Volcanoes rock Alaska geologist

Since 1988, Nye has worked with the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO). It’s a joint program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the state’s Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

The AVO monitors the state’s volcanoes, provides warnings of impending eruptions and conducts basic research to try to understand the natures of the hazards. It’s a big job considering that Alaska has more than three dozen active volcanoes in a chain stretching 1,500 miles.

“Imagine a map of Alaska,” says Nye, a member of the Alaska Public Employees Association. “There is the big central part, the head of a wolly mammoth. Reaching out to the west, the tusk of the woolly mammoth, that is the chain of volcanoes.”

One of the greatest hazards posed by Alaska’s volcanoes is the interruption of international air traffic due to volcanic ash. As the geometric center of the industrialized world, Alaska—Anchorage in particular—is a pit stop for virtually all international freight. And most passenger flights between East Asia and North America pass over Alaska, too.

Nye says the ash can cause jet aircraft engine failure. “There have been incidents where all four engines have shut down over Alaska and elsewhere around the planet,” says Nye. “But in all cases so far they have managed to restart engines.”

One of those incidents occurred in December 1989. A day after Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano erupted, a KLM Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet carrying nearly 250 passengers and crew from Amsterdam to Tokyo via Anchorage flew into an ash cloud belched by the 10,197-foot volcano. All four engines shut down. “It was within two minutes of impact,” recalls Nye, when engines were restarted.

“One of the things that is neat about this job is that it really is science in the public interest,” says Nye. “There are billions of dollars at risk.”

The eruption of Alaska’s Augustine Volcano in January brought worldwide attention to the AVO. Its Web site (www.avo.alaska.edu) had 70 million hits from more than 140 countries in the first part of January.

“I have the luxury of being able to pursue a hobby in a lot of detail and call it a job,” says Nye, who has worked for the state for 20 years. “I always look forward to Mondays. I’m always disappointed when I wake up and it’s [a holiday]. And the idea of going on vacation is not appealing to me.”

Land preservation top charge for BIA range technician

Watching grass grow, as well as other vegetation, is exactly what Peggy Plumlee does for a living.

Plumlee is a range technician for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Yakama Indian Nations Reservation along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in southwestern Washington state. She is one of two BIA employees at the 1.4 million acre reservation charged with overseeing cattle grazing activities. It’s a multi-faceted job where the bottom line is conservation of the land and its natural vegetation.

“I do a lot of plant identification,” says Plumlee, who is half Blackfeet Indian and one-quarter Yakama. “In this job, you have to be able to tell the different grasses, shrubs and plants because that will tell you how much forage production you have for cattle consumption.”

It’s the forage production, determined by the dry weight of vegetation samples, that helps Plumlee determine how much vegetation has been consumed, as well as how many cattle can be put in a range unit and still preserve the vegetation. “You don’t want to put anything out there where it is going to cause damage,” she says.

There are 36 grazing units covering about 900,000 acres on the reservation, says Plumlee, noting that 10 units aren’t being grazed due to a combination of restoration projects, including some to allow the vegetation to re-grow. “Last year, we didn’t have a good winter and a lot of the grass didn’t come back or didn’t get very tall,” she explains.

Right now, her branch is overseeing 19 permittees—cattle owners—who cumulatively have approximately 3,000 cattle. The grazing season runs April to November.

In addition to land management, Plumlee is responsible for ensuring permit compliance and policing the ranges for trespass and overgrazing. She also bills permittees and pays the landowners for use of their property.

Plumlee, a member of the Indian Educators Federation, has worked for the BIA at Yakama Indian Nations Reservation since 1990. She started out as the range clerk and worked her way into the range technician position.

Teaching job leads member to vocation at children services

Edelmann followed protocol: she sent notes home. And when she didn't get responses, Edelmann visited the parents at home.

“I found out very quickly why the kids I was working with weren’t doing well,” she says.

That experience is the reason Edelmann left the classroom and went to work for Montgomery County [Ohio] Children Services in Dayton.

Since 1988, Edelmann, a member of the Professionals Guild of Ohio (PGO), has worked for the agency doing everything from after-hours crisis work to providing reunification services for kids who have been removed from their homes.

“This is a very high burnout field,” Edelmann says. “If you don’t have the opportunity to do something a little different over time, you could not stay in this line of work for a very long time.”

Today, Edelmann works with foster children ages 16 to 21—a combination of kids who are getting ready to leave their foster homes and those who have already left. (Ohio discharges foster children from agency custody at age 18.)

As aftercare coordinator, Edelmann explains that it’s her job to “get kids ready to live on their own with limited support.”

Limited family support, that is. Anyone familiar with Edelmann knows she goes above and beyond in providing support to these disadvantaged youths. She’s available to her kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She helps them learn life skills. She helps them tap public resources, ranging from financial aid for college to grocery vouchers. She provides encouragement, guidance—and discipline.

“Doris is a real go-getter,” says Katherine Cox, PGO president. “Doris does not acknowledge the word ‘barrier.’ She finds a way to make things happen.”

The list of things Edelmann has made happen since she took the aftercare coordinator position four years ago is substantial—and likely to continue to grow. At Edelmann’s prompting, MCCS has a number of new programs for foster children, including an online education program, staffed by certified teachers, through which the kids can finish their high school educations.

“A lot of our kids bounce from foster home to foster home, and their high school situation changes,” Edelmann says. “Between freshman and senior years, many have been in 10 homes—and that is not an unrealistic number. So they lost out educationally.” The online learning at MCCS’s Digital Academy, she says, “is a consistent piece for them.”

In addition to education, Edelmann has developed other programs to provide the youths with more opportunities. One program that stands out is the youth advisory board made up of kids who have been in the system. “They are a voice for kids in foster care,” says Edelmann. “They are involved in community service projects as well as legislative advocacy.”

In 2004, Edelmann was named Caseworker of the Year by the Child Welfare League of America’s Midwest Region.

From Edelmann’s perspective, however, children services is a team effort. “The greatest thing about where I work is that we have a director who allows me to be creative and supports that creativity,” she says, adding that no matter the capacity one is working in, children services is a job that is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Providing due process is N.Y. administrative law judge’s duty

Phillips is one of about five dozen administrative law judges working for the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance’s (OTDA) office in Brooklyn. She presides over “fair hearings,” proceedings conducted by OTDA when social services recipients appeal what they consider to be an adverse action by HRA/DSS. The adverse actions include denial, discontinuance or reduction of benefits ranging from public assistance to medical assistance to food stamps—and a full menu of ancillary benefits administered by HRA/DSS.

The New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) member says it’s her job to see that the regulations are enforced in an objective and honest manner. She collects evidence, records testimony and then recommends a decision to the OTDA commissioner. Impartiality is the cornerstone of her job.

“At times, that’s difficult,” says Phillips, who joined OTDA in August 2000. “We are all human. But that is what we have to do. We have to put our personal feelings aside and conduct our hearings without bias or prejudgment toward the issue.”

ALJs in Phillips’ office have more than 30 cases on their calendar every day, and may conduct as many as 25 hearings in one day.

“At times, you have situations that literally make you want to cry,” she says. “You see helplessness. You see hopelessness. We have a lot of appellants who are disenfranchised, including people who are homeless. I have real human conditions that I am faced with everyday. People who are dependent on the system; and if the system fails them, they have nothing.”

The result of Phillips’ work, however, is priceless. She provides due process.

It’s the same result she seeks on behalf of OTDA employees working in her own Brooklyn office as well as locations in Manhattan and Long Island as a PEF council leader for the more than 120 members of her division.

“I like helping people,” says Phillips, “and making sure people’s rights are preserved, and their needs and concerns are dealt with. It is just what I do.”

Fire investigator sniffs out crime with help of K-9 in Kansas

“We are policemen,” says McCleary, a member of the Kansas Association of Public Employees. “We investigate fires and anything related to them. It could be murder, burglary, sexual abuse—any crime that can be related to arson or come out of arson. We make arrests, serve search warrants, carry guns.”

The state fire marshal’s office assists local fire departments and local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in the investigation of fires and explosions. McCleary says it’s a rewarding job. What he doesn’t say, however, is that it’s also a difficult job.

Arson is not only the leading cause of fire in the United States, it is one of the hardest crimes to solve. According to the International Association of Arson Investigators (IAAI), the national rate of conviction for arson averages 2 percent. It’s a costly crime and not just for the victims. A reported 25 cents of every dollar paid on fire insurance premiums goes to cover the cost of arson.

On any given day, at any given hour, McCleary never knows where he'll be. For the last five years, the one constant in McCleary’s job is Roxanne—a 60-pound black Labrador retriever.

McCleary and Roxanne were partnered by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under the bureau’s Accelerant Detection Canine Program, which places the specially trained dogs with state and local agencies to support their arson investigation activities.

As Roxanne’s handler, McCleary also is on an ATF national response team. When ATF needs Roxanne’s nose to help sniff out crime, they call McCleary.

As a handler, it’s McCleary’s responsibility to keep Roxanne’s skills sharp. “Everyday when we are not working a fire scene, I am training with my canine four hours a day during the week and two hours a day on weekends,” he says. “It’s labor intensive but we like to keep the dogs working because it keeps them on top of their game.”

The two made national news earlier this year when a horse barn at Eureka Downs racetrack in Eureka, Kan., burned, killing more than 40 quarter horses.

In 2004, the Kansas Fire Marshal’s investigation division worked more than 350 fire investigations and three dozen explosive investigations.

As McCleary says, however, “arsonists aren’t only in it for the [insurance] fraud. You have your typical pyromaniacs who are just setting fires to set fires.”

And McCleary knows first hand that fire also is used as a weapon in crimes of passion.

In 2001, McCleary was co-recipient of the IAAI Kansas Chapter’s Investigator of the Year Award for assisting in the arrest and conviction of a Kansas man who strangled his wife and then set the house on fire in 1998.

The man was convicted in May 2000 of murder, aggravated arson and criminal solicitation for asking relatives and acquaintances to give false evidence. McCleary was lead fire investigator on that case.

Part social work, part law enforcement equals probation work

The cumulative effect of her public service: safer communities.

For eight years, Barrett has worked for Connecticut’s judicial branch in the Office of Adult Probation in Hartford.

It’s the right fit for this Judicial Professional Employees union member who has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and sociology.

“It’s tough sometimes. You really have to separate yourself,” says Barrett. “You can’t be judgmental and biased in this job.”

For nearly two years, Barrett has been supervising sexual offenders. It’s an assignment she volunteered to do.

Her caseload fluctuates but the division’s standard for sex offender officers is a maximum of 45 offenders to one probation officer.

Barrett’s caseload covers the gambit of sexual offenders. She’s had probationers as young as age 16 and as old as age 71. Some have done hard time. Some have not.

“Protection of the community is first and foremost,” says Barrett.

As everyone knows, that can be challenging.

It’s the court system that determines who gets probation, and it’s probation officers who provide the public service of supervision—making sure probationers don’t violate the many conditions of their parole. And in that process, it’s the probation officer’s goal to keep offenders on track and productive members of society.

“The only leverage we have is if they have jail time hanging over their heads,” says Barrett.

“One of the biggest issues in the sex offender field is lack of housing,” notes Barrett, who is one of four sex offender officers in her office. “Nobody wants them living near them. [Meanwhile], we are trying to figure out where it would be appropriate for them to live considering the safety of the community. In many instances, these offenders end up in shelters longer because of housing restrictions.”

Barrett splits her time between office appointments and field visits. She’s required to see her probationers weekly. She also meets separately with treatment providers—treatment is a condition of probation—to discuss what is going on with the offenders.

“Sex offenders tend to be—on the surface—very compliant,” she explains. “They are on time for their office appointments. They go to group [therapy]. They can talk the talk. What’s important, especially with child molesters, is us getting in the field to see where they are living, where they are hanging around—what they are really doing.”

There are more than 60,000 people on probation in Connecticut at any given time.