Jan Pearo prepares to leave after nearly 25 years at WAGAP

STEVENSON — For nearly 25 years, Jan Pearo has been on a journey to support her community, making her the longest-running employee at Washington Gorge Action Programs (WAGAP).

In January 2000, Pearo began helping people in Skamania and Klickitat counties. She had recently moved to Stevenson from Portland.

It was a big change. Pearo had been working for a worldwide pump manufacturer for nine years when a call from her family came that she could not ignore.

“I came to help my mom,” Pearo said, “but later, she went to live with my sister in Hood River, and I was busy raising my four grandchildren in my mother’s house. So I stayed.”

Paperwork and organization were her strengths, and she learned of a job opening for a representative payee at WAGAP.

“I wanted something that I was sure that I could support my grandkids,” Pearo said.

As a new pep payee, she first worked with the Department of Health and later the Social Security Administration to manage benefits for people who couldn’t manage their own money. “It was a hard job,” Pearo said, “because people don’t want others to tell them what to do with their money.”

But she liked helping people and found it was always rewarding and interesting. “You never knew what you were going to deal with,” she said and added, “I still see a lot of my original clients. They’re great.”

Over the years, she added weatherization, energy assistance, and housing programs. She often supported multiple positions at a time and worked with low-income clients navigating the application processes for various benefits.

After working in Bingen, Pearo was moved to the Stevenson office and asked to turn over her rep payee position and focus on the new housing program while continuing her energy assistance work. WAGAP had secured a 10-year contract with Skamania County to work on homelessness prevention and had four transitional housing units in North Bonneville. She’s proud to have been on the team that initially opened the homeless shelter in Skamania County.

Eventually, Pearo focused full-time on energy assistance. She gets high praise for her work, and Executive Director Jennifer Pauletto said that she admires Pearo’s steadfastness and creativity in supporting clients. “Jan has built and sustained an essential program for our communities,” Pauletto said. “Her ability to connect with the older adult population and build trust means that many seniors ask for her by name and praise her for her help year after year.”

Pearo has seen the program and the agency grow and evolve over the years. When she first started helping with energy assistance, the program had around 500 clients throughout the year. In 2022, 864 households received energy assistance.

She shared how all her low-income families struggle with the ever-rising cost of living. “It’s really hard when they come to your office crying,” she said. She finds she needs to joke around a lot so she doesn’t become too overwhelmed by the stories she hears. Some clients face utility bills of $400-$500 a month, but they live on fixed incomes like Social Security, SSI, or TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).

Seniors make up 40-50% of her clients. She loves working with Public Utilities Departments (PUDs) and partner organizations like Senior Services to help her clients live the best lives possible. She tries to make things easier by holding events at senior meal sites around the two counties so they don’t have to make individual appointments to come to her office.

“Clients are often afraid of the PUDs,” Pearo said. “But that’s because they (the clients) are in crisis by the time they get to me,” Pearo said. “My biggest success is to be able to keep somebody’s power on and keep the heat and air in their home running.”

When she can’t help a senior or family because they are over the threshold of the earning limits, she does her best to redirect the client into programs to help with their other costs, keeping overall expenses down. She is also thankful that some grant programs, like the State Home Energy Assistance Program, have higher income limits, which helps more people be eligible.

This is Pearo’s last year leading her program, and she is training Amber Youtsey to take over when the annual application process opens again in October. Reflecting on her years at WAGAP, she is happy with her contribution and pleased with the improvements the organization has made to support employees and programs to serve clients better. “We’ve had really good leadership in that way,” she said.

Her sentiments are returned by Leslie Naramore, WAGAP’s former executive director. “When I came to WAGAP in 2013, I was working with Jan in a seasonal position in her program,” Naramore said. “During my training, I was so impressed with how Jan interacted with her clients. She knew every person by name and chatted with them like old friends. Jan will be hugely missed.”

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Una versión en español de esta historia está en línea en www.columbiagorgenews.com/enespanol.