Finding a path
Lost high school kid turned
Newport businessman
DEEP
DIVE
GO BENEATH THE
SURFACE WITH
PAUL HAEDER
“Th e foolish man seeks happiness in the
distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”
— James Oppenheim
Baloo is more than 125 pounds. Ashton
hits the scales at 45 pounds.
Th e canines’ owner, Charles “Chuck”
Ellard, keeps them cozy in a back room of
his Pacifi c Digital Works (formerly known
as Lazerquick of Newport).
When the big Great Dane-Mastiff mix
greets a willing customer, he’s a big baby.
Ashton is quick and happy to also slobber
over the customer.
Chuck is tall — 6’4’’ — and his eyes are
intense black. He looks at you square on,
listens intently, and has his own rat-ta-tat
retorts when things get going upstairs in his
head.
Th at’s usually 24/7, 365 days a year.
Deep Dive columns sometimes come to
me when I end up as a customer of some
local joint. In the case of Pacifi c Digital in
Newport, next to JC Market, I had several
projects for them to undertake — designing
a brochure for a non-profi t; scanning some
of my Vietnam slides for my new short
story collection; photocopying documents
for a talk I did in Portland.
Service with a smile goes a long way, and
Chuck is there interacting with customers.
Formative years
He tells me his life story, a lot of it off
the record. Th at’s okay with me, but many
times — as I tell the 31-year-old Chuck
— the best fodder for my column is the
gritty and gutsy stuff of legends or just the
events in life that demonstrate incredible
resiliency.
He realizes now that his life has shifted
from a fl y-by-the-seat youth and young
man to someone with employees to pay,
bills to track and loans to keep on track.
“I’ve always been lazy, but when I hit
high school, I didn’t like the structure of
the school,” he points out as we eat food
at Mazatlán. Th at was Newport High. “I’d
get my work done and then got bored. Got
tired of the busy work. I missed 46 days of
school my freshman year.”
He alludes to some little disruptive
things in his life but, for the most part,
Chuck says he just walked around town
while ditching school. “I did nothing, and I
know it sounds silly.”
Th en sophomore year came around. “I
knew I didn’t want to sit here, at school, all
day.” Th at’s when he got hooked up with
alternative high school. Th ere were three
hours a day in-school attendance and then
the rest was up to him to fi nd his path.
He said he was excelling at the alternative
school. “I did not want to be at the whim
of the teacher’s work ethic. It was my work
ethic that counted.”
He could have graduated his junior year,
but he attributes laziness to having to drag
it out by taking physics and wood shop
classes as his fi nal requirements. He didn’t
walk in graduation.
He and I talk about today’s youth, the
over-diagnosis of ODD, oppositional
defi ance order, a rather broad pseudo
psychology label pasted onto guys like
Chuck, even onto me at 63. We agree guys
like Albert Einstein and women like Rachel
Carson, if growing up today, would be put
on IEPs or behavior plans as ODD and
Attention Defi cit Disorder.
His life and attitudes — he lives in
Logsden with his girlfriend Keely, 28, who’s
from Chicago and assistant pool director
for Newport. Th ey live 25 miles from
town on an acre and a half with their dogs
fulfi lling their need for rural lifestyle.
“Get this . . . the other day, I watched
a wild turkey attack a deer. You don’t see
that every day,” Chuck said with a laugh,
emphasizing that the deer just looked
exasperated and blasé about the fowl-vs-
ungulate skirmish.
Th e bullied ‘fat kid’
Th e year 2003 saw the 14-year-old
Chuck Ellard overweight, sick and on a
heavy course of antibiotics. Finally, that
5’10’’ chubby frame stretched six inches and
shed 40 pounds in one year.
“I had no friends in school.”
Some of the formative years he alludes
to — his dad wasn’t “present” as he was
a self-centered, narcissist and superfi cial
man. Th ese are all Chuck’s words, with the
caveat, “I love him to death.”
It’s clear the business end of things got
rolling with his mother, Rose Reed, who
bought the Lazerquick franchise with help
from her brother. Th at was 1999. Th ey had
moved from Hillsboro where the young
Chuck went to McKinley Elementary.
He was good with wood working, and
did roofi ng, framing and concrete work
around the area post high school.
“All of a sudden I am inside and dry.”
He ended up helping his mother in 2015.
His mom, 67, bought out her brother.
In 2006, Pacifi c Digital Works, Inc. was
incorporated, but the name Lazerquick
stuck.
In 2018, Chuck says is mother almost
died. It was sink or swim for her son
keeping the business afl oat.
“I’ve always loved a challenge. Th e
business was shoved onto me. Sink or swim.
If this fails, then it’s your fault.”
I ran into Chuck Jan. 1, 2020, when he
just took over the business. He was getting
deep into the accounting side of things.
He’s been spending money on advertising.
He’s has had a story on his business
published in some local media.
Small town news — A new outdoor
sign is up on the front of the business. He
attributes the graphics and logo style to one
of his employees.
Th ere are four full-time workers there,
including Chuck. He says he pays a living
wage, and when the eight hours are up, he
expects his workers not to take the work
home. He also understands low-wage jobs
from his construction days where he had to
take on a second job just to pay the bills.
He is his employees’ best advocate for
self-care and downtime.
His biggest conundrum now is he
doesn’t like it that a lot of people around
town recognize him from the business. He’s
a member of the chambers of commerce in
Newport and Toledo.
•••
Read on, as Deep Dive continues at www.
oregoncoasttoday.com
Paul Haeder is a writer living and working
in Lincoln County. He has two books coming
out, one a short story collection, “Wide Open
Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non-
fi ction book, “No More Messing Around: Th e
Good, Bad and Ugly of America’s Education
System.”
oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • May 29, 2020 • 5