Not down in the dumps

BIG LAKE — If you frequent the Big Lake or Sutton transfer sites, you probably recognize the ever-smiling face of 41-year-old Denise Hook of Big Lake.

Not that taking your trash to the dump is ever a fun deal, but the tall brunette attendant makes the chore a little more pleasant, according to many a garbage-hauling patron.

Hook, a self-described military brat born on an Air Force base in New Mexico, moved every two to three years of her life until 1972, when her stepfather was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

Hook has manned the little buildings at the Mat-Su Borough's transfer sites, taking money and asking Valley folks if they are hauling any paint, oil or batteries for the past six years.

"I love this job, it's great," Hook said. "The people are wonderful and my boss is great."

Customers come by, Hook said, and bring her things like coffee and doughnuts. On a hot day just the other week, someone brought by a Popsicle to help Hook cool off.

What's the down side to working at the borough dump? Hook's least favorite part of the job is when customers bring in what she describes as "stinky fish-gut bags."

"Well, it just depends on how old the fish-gut bags are, you know? I was helping a guy unload his truck one time and the bag ripped and it dripped all down my leg. It's some stinky, yucky stuff," Hook said, laughing at the memory. "Yeah, you can get some gross stuff."

And then there is the wildlife. Hook said this spring she saw a little black bear hanging around the Big Lake facility. A few years ago in Sutton, Hook said another attendant saw a grizzly bear with a couple of cubs near the dump.

"This year the most interesting critter I got a hold of was this," said Hook, grabbing a Polaroid picture from the wall. In the photo is what appears to be a giant rat-like creature huddled among bags of garbage in the back of a trailer.

"They thought it was a rat, but in Alaska we don't have rats," Hook said. "It was a good-sized thing. Another customer came along and noticed it had webbed feet, so we figured out it was a muskrat. I had a friend here at the time and we put it in a little box and she brought it down to the creek."

Hook said the animal jumped in the water and swam around and started cleaning itself.

"It was a happy camper," she said.

While Hook is also quite happy in her present job, her résumé is an interesting one.

After graduating from high school in Anchorage, Hook said she had the "typical Alaskan first job" doing cannery work and working on fishing boats. It was the year Elvis died, Hook recalled.

"It was when you were flown in and out by the cannery," Hood said, "and if you didn't complete your stint out there, you had to fly yourself back. I wanted to go see what it was like so I worked long enough until I had my money to get out."

It was a great experience, traveling to different villages and meeting friendly people, she said.

Hook moved to Kodiak around the time of the Exxon Valdez spill. She traveled there with her dog Kavick — a coyote-collie-arctic wolf and German shepherd mix — and her convertible car loaded with her belongings.

While there, Hook worked on a buffalo ranch riding horses, and later she hooked up with a crew that boated to the outer islands around Kodiak to clean up spilled oil that made its way from the disaster in Valdez.

Life would then take her to Cook Inlet, where she signed on as a cook's helper on some of the oil platforms. One job was on the platform known as, "The Steelhead."

"It was the new state-of-the-art multi-million-dollar platform," Hook said. "It just so happened that on my R&R it caught fire and burned for quite a while. I was kind of upset I missed it because I wanted to go out in one of those little escape pods."

Remarkably, none of Hook's coworkers were injured in the explosion, she said.

Making her way back to Anchorage, Hook said she took a job with United Parcel Service, first on the ramp, unloading and loading trucks. After a few years she got on as a driver.

"It was a strenuous job. They raised the weight limit to 150 pounds. It was crazy. That was just way more than I weighed. I decided if I was going to kill myself, I'd rather do it skiing or on a snowmachine, not on the job," Hook said.

Meanwhile, Hook bought her home on 33 acres of land in Big Lake. She decided to forgo the long commute and heavy lifting for her present job with the borough.

Like many Big Lakers, Hook lost nearly everything she owned in the Millers Reach fire.

"My neighbor, Louie, had some of my prints and my mother, who used to work for the IRS, stressed the importance of tax forms so I grabbed my file cabinet," Hook said.

Hook and some friends had attempted to cut down some trees around her cabin and hope for the best, but the fire proved too powerful.

"By the time the trooper was driving down my driveway, I was telling everybody to get out," Hook said.

Hook and her friends abandoned her property and went to

an elderly friend's home and managed to save it from the fire. After the fire, Hook rebuilt, but her property is still scarred by the devastation.

Hook said as she looks back on the fire now, her greatest impression of the disaster wasn't so much the loss, but how people rallied to help each other.

"It was really refreshing and amazing how everybody got together," Hook said. "It's good to know if a disaster ever happens again people will come out and help each other."