Respiratory therapist Greg Barker is serious when he says he never could have imagined rebounding from a manufacturing layoff by going to college and training for his career in the medical profession as smoothly as he did.

He is just as serious when he says he owes a great deal of his newfound security and success to the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Dislocated Worker program.

“I’ve never made as much money in my life as I do now, and I owe the biggest part of that to WIA,” Greg says. “I’m still in awe with the service I received, and I’ve never experienced an agency being there for me 110 percent like what happened to me with WIA.”

Greg, who lives in Grayson with his wife and two young daughters, says the demand for respiratory therapists is so high that he actually has two jobs. In addition to his job at King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, Greg is also employed by a “traveling” medical staffing agency that currently has him stationed at Davis Memorial Hospital in Elkins, WV.

At both locations, whether Greg does his job well can mean the difference between life and death for patients in critical condition. When those patients go “Code Blue”—meaning cardiac arrest—Greg intubates them and hooks them up to life support machines that keep them alive.

“We work hand-in-hand with the doctors,” Greg says. “When those things happen, we’re basically trauma specialists.”

When not dealing with emergencies, Greg stays busy caring for patients who have chronic pulmonary or lung diseases and disorders by administering various tests and treatments, and monitoring patients on ventilators.

Although he enjoys his active new career, Greg says he never had any intention of going into the medical field. But after being laid off from his job at the Toyota plant in Georgetown in 2001, Greg says he wanted to enter a profession with more stability and security than manufacturing can offer.

Upon filing for Unemployment Insurance benefits, Greg was referred to Northeast Kentucky Community Action Agency in Olive Hill to check how the WIA Dislocated Worker Program could help him train for a new career. The Northeast office is an access point for the JobSight network, a collaborative partnership of workforce and training agencies administered by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP).

“After the WIA came into the picture, it has been a ‘Cinderella story’ for me ever since,” Greg says. “This program really helped me get back on my feet and move forward.”

Greg enrolled at Rowan Technical College, a Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) affiliate located in Morehead. WIA supportive services stepped in to cover the daily gas and food expenses associated with his college experience. WIA funds also covered Greg’s tuition and textbook fees, and would even go on to cover costs for his “scrubs” and other medical equipment needed during his clinical rotations.

“Not one penny had to come out of my pocket for school,” Greg says.

What’s more, Greg says WIA did not abandon him during a stint of active duty in the Army National Guard that began in the spring of 2002. His education was put on hold during what became a two-year deployment to Richmond and Fort Knox, but he did not lose touch with his WIA career adviser, Becky Roar.

“I frequently kept in touch with Becky and the WIA staff throughout my deployment,” Greg says. “They really were part of my deployment, and it’s almost like they were there with me.”

Greg returned home in May 2004 and resumed his classes that fall without a hitch, thanks to the WIA staff’s assistance. In addition to covering his education expenses, WIA also assisted Greg with daycare and housing funding when his family’s finances were tight.

Greg finally graduated in December 2005, and has been employed and busy in his new medical career since. Greg says WIA went above and beyond the call of duty in helping him work into that career, which is helping him provide for his family at a level he could have never imagined.

“We don’t live above our means, but we can basically do whatever we want within our means, and I never had that kind of freedom before,” Greg says. “I give credit to the Lord first for that, and then to WIA. It really is a wonderful thing.”

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