Good luck getting five uninterrupted minutes with Lisa Roop. Quiet moments are few and far between during Lisa’s work day as a medical secretary at Dr. Charles Nichols’ Pikeville office, where more than 40 patients come through the front door each day. The constant on-the-job activity is fine with Lisa, because she remembers well when her career came to a sudden halt not long ago.

She also remembers what an important role the WIA Dislocated Worker program played in getting her new career started.

In March 2001, Lisa was suddenly laid off after working for three years on the switchboard staff of a local hospital. She soon signed up for unemployment insurance and relied on that assistance as she searched for a new job. More than two months into that search, Lisa, 33, still had not found a satisfactory job opportunity. As the single parent of a young daughter, Lisa knew she had to do something to get her life back on track.

She was discouraged, but a bit of information she casually received from a friend encouraged her to look toward a college education and a new meaningful career.

“I was just talking to an acquaintance one day, and they told me about the WIA Dislocated Worker program,” Lisa said. “If I hadn’t heard about that, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to school.”

She chose to pursue an entirely new career as a medical office technologist, and looked into classes toward an associate’s degree at the Pikeville Campus of Mayo Technical College and Prestonsburg Community College. She also visited the Pike County JobSight—an Eastern Kentucky C.E.P., Inc. one-stop workforce center located at the college—to find out more about the Dislocated Worker program.

Lisa began her enrollment both in college and the Dislocated Worker program in August 2001. WIA provided support to cover her college-related expenses for gas and meals. That support allowed her to quit a part-time weekend restaurant job that she had taken to help make ends meet, and focus strictly on her most intense classes and her clinical cooperative education work during her final two semesters of college.

“Without (the WIA assistance), it would have been very hard, and there’s no doubt that I would have had to keep on working,” Lisa said.

After four semesters, Lisa graduated. Just prior to her graduation, Lisa had been contacted by a representative of Dr. Charles Nichols’ practice in Pikeville, where she had done some of her clinical work. She was encouraged to apply for an open medical office technologist’s position. Lisa applied, interviewed for the job, and only days later was offered the position. She graduated on Friday, May 9, and began her new job the following Monday.

“Talk about a weekend flying by. I never even got a break,” Lisa chuckled. “But I didn’t complain because I needed to go to work.”
Lisa sees each of Dr. Nichols’ patients twice: once to check them in before they see the doctor and once to finalize their paperwork as they prepare to leave.

“For us, seeing 35 patients is a slow day,” she said. “We usually run in the high 40s, but I’ve seen as many as 65 people come in here on a single day. I’m working at probably one of the busiest doctor’s offices in Pikeville.”

Lisa said the pace doesn’t bother her, because it is a good, steady job that allows her to provide for herself and her 10-year-old daughter. She said that in the future she would consider going back to college for further education, possibly pursue a degree in human services.

The WIA was a major component in helping her build the confidence to pursue whatever she wants in life, Lisa said.

“It made a pretty big difference to me, and that support was always there when you needed it,” Lisa said. “I don’t know what I would have done without it.”