A look at our neighbors

Artists and old-timers, professionals and skateboarders, judges and pawnbrokers -- the Mat-Su Valley is home to a vast array of personalities, interests and backgrounds. Each Friday in the Frontiersman, we spotlight one of "Our Neighbors" in a front-page feature story. Here is a sampling of some of the people we introduced our readers to during 2002.

Newest neighbor arrives

Thomas Myrvold became the Valley's first new neighbor of 2002 when he arrived at Valley Hospital's Family Birthing Center at 5:56 a.m. New Year's Day.

Myrvold was relaxing in a pin-stripe infant baseball uniform around noon New Year's Day when contacted by the Frontiersman but declined to comment during his interview.

"He hasn't learned to cry," said Ruby Myrvold, Thomas's mother, "He's been real happy so far. He's just been looking around."

Thomas was expected to move to the Myrvold home on Jan. 2. On New Year's Day, his father, Lyle Myrvold, brought sisters Shelby and Ruth and brother Tyler to the hospital to meet their newborn brother.

Former bartender relates

"wild times" in Mat-Su's early days

After 26 years of Valley living, Nancy Van Asdoll says it's hard to adjust to the influx of more people.

Yet she has insight into what attracts people to this area.

"People come to Alaska to be free, to be free-spirited. Sometimes that causes a problem, but it's life in Alaska," Van Asdoll said. "And I love it here."

Van Asdoll's insights stem from nearly two decades of bartending in Wasilla and a lifetime of observations. She drove up the Alaska Highway from Michigan in 1976 with her two young children, then 12 and 8. Her husband preceded her to Alaska and settled his heart on Wasilla.

In those early years, a lot of building was going on in the Valley and he was hired for the construction of Settler's Bay. She found work at the Kashim Inn as a bartender and remained there for 11 years.

"Those were some wild days, when people would really get into some scraps," Van Asdoll said. "Tough people, but I was tough too, and could keep them in line."

Palmer mixologist

found a new self in Alaska

In many ways, Jamie Hutson is like a good bartender.

He's quick with a joke, but is never obtrusive or crude. He's friendly with newcomers, and knows his regulars. He has a way of making customers feel like Norm in "Cheers," as if the crowd were calling a rousing "Hello!" when they walk through the door.

For more than a few, when he spots their cars on the street he prepares their drinks before they've even stepped inside. Skinny vanilla lattŽ? It's all ready to go. And by the way, how's the new job?

Hutson carries on hundreds of separate conversations in a day, steaming milk, cranking out the espresso and picking up wherever he last left off with a customer. Is your kid enjoying his new classes? Did you finally get that car you've been eying?

Trooper wears many

hats in courthouse career

Alaska State Trooper Christopher Harris has a desk in a busy little office alcove of the Palmer courthouse.

He's frequently seen in the courtroom -- bringing in defendants, passing them court documents and adjusting the microphone so their voices can be heard.

"I really like people," Harris said. "When they get here, they have enough tension. I try to help the defendants maintain a degree of dignity and try to keep them calm."

And it shows as Harris, 39, steps into action when defendants appear in handcuffs, needy and disheveled as they prepare to face the judge. He's been seen pouring prisoners cups of water.

Maybe this accounts for Harris' recent recognition as Best Law Enforcement Officer in the Valley, voted so in a Frontiersman readers' poll. "I am so surprised and delighted," Harris laughed when he first was told.

There is no mistaking

Matt Yoder's calling

If the spiky Mohawk and pierced lower lip aren't clear enough indicators, then there's the fact that when the weather is fine and the pavement is dry Yoder is more likely to be on a skateboard than doing anything else on Earth.

When the 20-year-old Palmer High graduate is not skateboarding or working at a local pizza restaurant, he can be found in a place that is perhaps second only to heaven -- Bandwagon Skate and Snowboard Shop, where he works two days a week.

"It's every skateboarder's dream," he said of working at Bandwagon. "It's taken me years to get this job -- there's a line for it."

Boy's dream car becomes a young man's project

John Elder has always had a passion for older cars and at 27 there are a few cars that have made an impression on him.

The Cadillac Eldorado "training car" his parents gave him when he attended Wasilla High School is memorable because he wrenched on it with his dad, Rob Ashburn, and he taught his girlfriend Krishanna Roofe -- now Krishanna Elder -- how to drive in it. He also has fond memories of the '69 Chevrolet El Camino he helped his grandfather restore in the early '90s. He even has good things to say about a Chevrolet Citation he used to own for basic transportation.

"It didn't drip a bit of oil," Elder said.

But the car that made the earliest, and possibly deepest, impression on Elder is the Chevrolet Impala Super Sport.

Finding happiness behind a pawn shop counter

Katina Stewart is not the person you would expect to find behind the counter of a pawn shop. Her polite joking, youthful face and sweet manner are the antithesis of images of drive-a-hard-bargain Louie-the-Legbreaker types.

But just as surprising is the fact that Stewart seems comfortable among the rows of guitars and guns, fishing poles and chain saws, hammers and wrenches at Alaska Best Pawn, which she helps run with her father and sister.

"You do have men who don't want to talk to you," the 30-year-old woman said between answering phone calls and helping customers. "Some people see a woman back here and think she is there to do the filing and sweep the floor."

But this woman does a lot more than all that.

"The 16-speed drill press?" she asked one customer. As she tabulated the bill, Stewart joked with the man about presidential politics and gun laws.

Judge enjoys

life on the bench

Palmer Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler turned over her courtroom Wednesday to the trial of the three little pigs, who allegedly aggravated the big bad wolf to his death in a brick house.

Reading from a script written by Cutler, the fourth-grade class of Georgia Tompkins at Academy Charter School formed judge and jury to try the case. Each pig had his own defense attorney, and three prosecuting attorneys attempted to show how the pigs lured the wolf to his death.

Amanda Booth was outfitted in Cutler's own black robe, seated at the place of honor. The body of the big bad wolf was admitted into evidence, laid out on a table. And Kaitlynn Adams took over as a reporter, covering the case with a camera.

Palmer Pioneer cemetery

is a family tradition

It seems appropriate that the son of the Palmer Colony's first mortician is now the general caretaker of the Palmer Pioneer Cemetery.

Wayne Bouwens moved to Palmer with his mother and father when he was 5-1/2 years old and, although most people know him as the Moffit farm dairy farmer or employee at the University of Alaska Fairbanks experimental farm, many area residents know him as the go-to guy for the Palmer cemetery.

Although Bouwens, ever humble, describes his involvement with the Palmer cemetery after his father died as simply picking up where there was a need, his attention to detail and motivation shows otherwise.

Gas-pumper serves

up friendliness

It's not uncommon to find a kind waitress who takes the time to make customers feel good, or a helpful cashier who makes a difference during a mad dash to the store.

But it is unusual to find any gas station attendants these days, let alone one who isn't grouchy. A guy who isn't too busy to look under the car and tell you the car is making that noise because the muffler's loose. A gas-pumping attendant like those of the old days, who even washes windows.

Say hello to Ray Lee of Fisher's Fuel Tesoro in downtown Palmer.

"I really like working around people. Everyone needs that friendly encounter to give them a little bit of peace," Lee said Tuesday while washing car windows at the station, his blue eyes serious above a characteristic smile.

Valley man follows piano calling

At first glance, Ben Johnston's yard off Soapstone Road looks like that of the typical Alaskan -- there's a four-wheeler, a small bulldozer, a horse trailer, a stack of rough-cut lumber. But step inside his shop and you will find the unexpected.

Instead of caribou antlers, bicycles, skis or a jumble of fishing poles, there are pianos in various states of dismantlement.

Within the cramped, 16-foot-by-20-foot workspace are three of the huge instruments, their wood dark brown and worn and their various parts stacked against the wall. The inner workings of one are carefully set up on a workbench that is equally crowded with tools and small parts.

Ben Johnston is a piano tuner and repairman, and while it may seem an odd occupation for a man who spent most of his life in the construction and fishing industries, it is one he said he has been attracted to his entire life.

Welding artist, mother

shows her metal

Once cutting flame is applied to steel, there is no turning back. There is no erasing a pencil line, or painting over a misplaced brush stroke. The cuts are permanent, and this is part of what draws artist Allison Wright to the medium.

But there is more. There is the incongruity of a delicate, fleeting iris being captured in cold, enduring metal. There is the way colors, blues and greens and reds, shimmer to the metallic surface when heat is applied correctly to the steel wings of an eagle.

"I like the permanence of it," Wright explained while sitting at her dining room table, her hand on her belly. She is pregnant with twin daughters and, as she described her art, her two other young daughters played in a nearby room.

Woman enjoys serving

country through election work

"The division of elections couldn't be the division of elections without all these volunteers," said Carol Thompson, the Alaska Division of Elections' Southcentral region elections supervisor recently.

Across the state, more than 2,500 people gather during each statewide election year to go through training and learn how to be an election official. It's a job in which political views are left at the door and a welcoming attitude and careful adherence to the rules are two of the primary job qualifications.

It's a job that Wasilla resident Doris Hagadorn enjoys. She has worked at elections in Wasilla for a number of years and, for a few years before that, helped out with elections at Tanaina Elementary. Several years prior to that, Hagadorn said, she and her co-worker helped out when asked by election officials in the village of Nondalton.

Hagadorn said she sees the work less as a job than a chance to give back to a nation she's proud to be a part of.