Tammi Gorman doesn't think a thing about working past quitting time. In fact, she really doesn't know what it's like to shut off the lights at 4:30 in the afternoon each day to head home.

As the sun sets over the mountains beside the L.K.L.P. Community Action Council's headquarters near Hazard, Tammi is often still working the phone, staying in touch with local employers to try to secure on-the-job training contracts for her many clients who are seeking employment. On other evenings, she is involved in one-on-one meetings with those clients, some of whom come to her fresh out of work and hope.

Some would say that's going above and beyond the call of duty. In Tammi's opinion, it is all just part of her job as WIA On-the-Job Training (OJT) coordinator for L.K.L.P. at the Perry County JobSight. L.K.L.P. performs the program under contract with Eastern Kentucky C.E.P., Inc. (EKCEP), which provides the funding.

"If it takes me all night to find them something, I'll gladly do it," Tammi said. "I try to make sure they leave here at least feeling like they're going in some direction, because sometimes they come in here and have no idea where their lives are going."

It's that dedication that's helped the OJT program lead over 100 eastern Kentuckians to employment and hands-on skills training. Tammi's dedication has also helped the program attain a significant role in the economic development of Perry County and the surrounding community.

During her tenure as OJT coordinator, the program was key in bringing American Woodmark Corporation's new $20 million cabinet makring plant and 260 new jobs to eastern Kentucky. Tammi said 49 people in the inaugural job training class there developed by EKCEP and the OJT program will soon exit that program as full-time employees of the plant making $7.50 per hour.

Another large-scale local employer that the OJT program has been involved with is the TECO Coal corporation, which she said trains participants for the 880 hours required for workers to become underground miners.

Tammi said she is most proud of the fact that the program recently launched one of its first rounds of upgrade training for OJT participants working for TECO mines. Upgrade training teaches incumbent workers the skills that will allow them to move up to a better job within their current company. The TECO upgrade training will train workers in more specialized mining skills (such as operating a continuous mining machine, roof bolting, and operating heavy equipment ) that will allow them to move from $10 per hour to $14 per hour.

"These people can now go to any other coal mine they want and work," she said. "They have the leverage then, and that's something I love seeing happen for our participants."

The program doesn't deal only with major employers. Tammi also has people working and receiving on-the-job training at a local lawyer's office, a dentist's office and at a motorcycle dealership. The participant at the dentist's office was initially hired as a clerk, and she's now receiving training to become a dental assistant, thanks to the OJT program.

"Seeing someone get that kind of an opportunity just makes me want to go 'cha-ching,'" she chuckled. "That really puts a smile on my face, and that's where I hope this is all going.

"I hope to someday see somebody come back here who says that they started with OJT and they're now making $100,000 a year and it started right here in this office," Tammi said. "That's one of my dreams."

A large part of the successes of the L.K.L.P. OJT program can be attributed to the many connections Tammi has built with local business leaders and employers. Now, instead of always having to contact employers in order to find work for clients, Tammi said the employers often call her asking for more OJT workers.

The other crucial part of the equation is the clients, she said. The OJT program there currently has about 70 active trainees in local jobs, and 70 have exited their training and are working full-time for the employers. Add to that the 50 trainees who soon will become full-time employees at American Woodmark, and the numbers show Tammi's face-to-face approach to the program is succeeding.

"We're putting assets out into the community instead of liabilities," she said. "They truly become productive members of society."

The numbers certainly are good, but the true success of the program can be gauged by the smiles on the participant's faces when they exit the program with jobs paying them a living wage, Tammi said.

"It's all worth it to me when people come up to me a month later and say, 'Ms. Gorman, you saved my family. You took the time to help me,'" she said.

One particular case involved a Knott County man who became a repeat visitor to the OJT offices after the coal mine in which he received his training in laid him off. Tammi didn't give up, finding him a new opportunity as fast as she could. She made such an impression on him that when his wife had twins a little while later, he gave one of them Tammi's middle name-Grace-in her honor.

"That's the finest compliment anyone could have ever paid me for what I do," she said.

Whether large or small, each and every success for her participants means a great deal to her, she said.

"My father taught me from an early age that you go above and beyond to help people without asking anything in return, and those are the good deeds that you take to Heaven with you," Tammi said. "Not a day goes by that I don't feel the rewards of seeing these people get the help they need."