The Columbia Press
1
Clatsop County’s Independent Weekly
www.thecolumbiapress.com
WHS Spanish
teacher has well
traveled career
Vol. 5, Issue 39
September 24, 2021
Vaccine mandate leads to slow burn in Warrenton
Left: Volunteers
at a practice
burn training on
Skipanon Drive
in 2018. (Diane
Collier)
Bottom left: Vol-
unteers arrange
to transport a fire
boat to help fight a
fire aboard a fish-
ing vessel in the
Skipanon River in
April. (Bella Byers)
Below: Volunteers
read to children at
a 2020 commu-
nity event. (Cindy
Hansen)
By Bruce Dustin
For The Columbia Press
Carolina Ochoa-Roloff es la nueva
maestra de español en la escuela se-
cundaria en Warrenton.
Said another way, Señora Ochoa-Rol-
off is the new Spanish teacher at WHS.
She grew up in La
Puente, Calif., began
teaching at Jurupa
Valley High and then
Rubidoux High, both
in Riverside County,
Calif.
Ochoa-Roloff
moved to Clatsop
County when her hus-
band, Travis Roloff, Ochoa-Roloff
was transferred here.
Roloff is a chief warrant officer in the
Coast Guard and he transferred here
recently from Massachusetts.
Their marriage has given her the op-
portunity to work at some interesting
places. She taught at Sonoma Valley
High School while he was assigned
to Station Golden Gate in San Fran-
cisco; at Public Schools Academy in
Fairfield, Calif., a high school that’s
run like a military school and geared
toward public safety education; and
Nauset Regional High School in
Eastham, Mass., when her husband
was transferred to Cape Cod.
Nauset, where Ochoa-Roloff taught
for four years, had a diverse student
population, many of them with Por-
tuguese and Brazilian backgrounds. It
is one of the top 100 schools in Amer-
ica through the U.S. Department of
Education’s “Nationally Recognized
Schools of Excellence” program.
Her arrival here from Massachusetts
-- from one coast to the other -- is due
to her husband’s redeployment.
Bienvenidos a Warrenton, Señora
Carolina Ochoa-Roloff.
50 ¢
By Cindy Yingst
The Columbia Press
Gov. Kate Brown’s mandate meant
to force the hesitant masses to get
vaccinated or lose their jobs could
have dire consequences for Warren-
ton and other communities who rely
on volunteers for fire and emergen-
cy medical services.
Warrenton Fire Department,
which serves the city as well as un-
incorporated areas south of the city,
has three paid career employees and
20 volunteers. More than half of the
volunteers are unvaccinated.
The mandate hits Warrenton –
and other rural fire agencies state-
wide – especially hard.
“I’m sick about it. I’ve lost sleep
over it,” Warrenton Fire Chief Bri-
an Alsbury said. “I volunteered for
13 years before I took the job as the
chief and my heart goes out to them.
“Truly everyone in Warrenton who
volunteers, they’re here for their
community. They enjoy fighting
fires and going out on medical calls.
This mandate is going to keep them
See ‘Vaccine’ on Page 4
For more on this issue, read Mayor
Balensifer’s column on page 7.
Warrenton clinic doctor featured in nationwide campaign
Dr. Elizabeth Erikson, a physician at
the CMH-OHSU Clinic in Warrenton,
is featured in a nationwide campaign
for 3RNET, a resource for health pro-
fessionals seeking careers in rural
and underserved communities.
The “First. Next. Forever.” cam-
paign highlights Erikson’s story
and the work of Amanda Judd, who
worked as CMH’s provider recruiter
for five years before moving to her
husband’s next Coast Guard duty sta-
tion earlier this summer. Judd helped
bring Erikson to CMH in 2018 when
she saw she would be a good fit for the
organization’s Planetree, person-cen-
tered culture.
Stacee Reed, program manager
“We’re so fortunate that Dr. Erik- for recruitment and retention with
See ‘Campaign’ on Page 5
son believed CMH had everything
she was looking for,” Judd says
in the recruitment campaign.
“I can say with confidence that
she is making a positive differ-
ence in the community. She’s
exactly who we had hoped for.”
3RNET includes a digital
search engine for professionals
to search for jobs. Its national
network of coordinators covers
all 50 states and represents or-
ganizations that serve the na-
Dr. Elizabeth Erikson at her family farm.
tion’s health care safety net.