Here are the photos and presentation speeches from our volunteers of the year recognition by Sky Valley Arts Council.

Richard Bergman 2018 Volunteer of the Year

Richard Bergman kind of got talked into helping on the Startup Event Center project by his friend Rick Cross. Not sure how excited he was right at the beginning. Richard is a plumber. He and Rick had over 300 hours into replacing all of the old cast iron pipes and putting in new pipes. It was a complete ‘do over’.

There’s something kind of magic about the Startup Event Center. Once you get involved it becomes part of you and you start to really care about it. That’s what happened to Richard. Between he and Rick there’s nothing they can’t do. Andthere’s a lot that still needs to be done. They completed the new heating system, ducting, venting, and so much more. We would not be where we are right now without Richard and his expertise in plumbing and general construction.

Even if we would have had the money to pay any plumber out there to do our work, it wouldn’t have been done to the standard that Richard maintained for Startup.

Sebastian Hernandez 2018 Volunteer of the Year Award

Sebastian Hernandez, owner of HS Foundations here in Sultan, stopped by the Chamber/Visitor Center office. And that’s how it all began! Sebastian and his family used to live in Startup and were sadden to see the Startup Gym slowly falling down. When I told him about the work that was being done he said that he wanted to help. The timing was perfect for us! We were searching for someone to help us build a concrete handicap ramp and to replace the sidewalk on the kitchen side of the building but with no luck.

Perfect timing for us but really awful timing for Sebastian. It was during the cold monsoon that we had during November. Absolutely miserable. He got the ramp done for the fund-raising birthday party which was almost miraculous. Then he took on the sidewalk from Highway 2 to the parking lot. It was so cold during that stretch that he and his crew had to use torches to warm up the ground before the pour so that it would set up properly.

Cadman Concrete gave us employee pricing on the concrete and Sebastian donated all of his labor to help our community. The work is beautiful and we would highly recommend him to anyone who has concrete work to do. We would not have been able to get this done without Sebastian.

Our Volunteers of the year!

Richard Bergman and Sebastian Hernandez