Trading stripes for centrifuge at life's midpoint

PALMER -- In the mid-1990s Owen Tarr was approaching 20 years of military service with an opportunity to retire. He was a master sergeant in the Alaska Army National Guard and although he could sign on for another five years, as an enlisted man, his age would limit his opportunity for promotion in the last five years. So he decided 20 years was it. He would be looking for a new job at the age of 54.

Tarr didn't have solid ideas about what to do next, so he set some goals. He wanted his work to be part time at a job he enjoyed, and he wanted to work close to his Wasilla home. His wife Nancy worked in a medical office. She suggested he go to school to become a medical laboratory technician. There was a good program at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Tarr had been commuting to Anchorage every day for 13 years. Why not switch from the job at the national guard armory to the classrooms at UAA?

"She came home with that little piece of data and I thought she was nuts," Tarr said. "I was looking at maybe working construction or getting my CDL and driving a truck."

Tarr had been to college before, he had an associate's degree in business. He also had a variety of experience, including service in the Air Force as a crew chief for B-52 bombers in the early 1960s, and as a maintenance shop manager for a car dealership in Kodiak, then as a master sergeant working full time so the National Guard equipment and supplies were ready when the guardsmen were called.

"I worked for them. I made sure that when they came in for training, everything was ready for them," he said.

But none of those experiences told Tarr whether he would be comfortable in a classroom, let alone a laboratory. Tarr's first semester at UAA he took a biology course. It was a prerequisite for the laboratory technician program he had his eye on.

"I didn't know if at my age I wanted to jump into something this heavy or not," Tarr said.

Now he calls biology "cool" and he works in the laboratory at The Family Health Center, a physician-owned private practice in Palmer. His fellow students at UAA were all younger than he was. So were his teachers. But in many ways, Tarr's recent experience -- establishing himself in a technical trade while in his late 50s -- is a lot like that of any new graduate.

Because he chose a focused degree program, Tarr landed his first job in just one month as a lab tech at the Alaska Native Hospital in Anchorage. Once again, his peers were all younger than he was. This time around they were his on-the-job mentors.

"I worked with some super techs there and got some excellent experience," Tarr said.

When asked what advice he'd offer people entering a technical field, Tarr suggested that finding a job at a place with an experienced staff can make all the difference. At Alaska Native Hospital, Tarr said he was a "rookie" working alongside a couple dozen veteran lab techs, each with 10 or 20 years of experience. Their experience was invaluable to him.

"Don't pay attention to the instruments. Pay attention to the attitude of the tech," Tarr said. "Some of these guys do this with such a smoothness."

A good technician also relies on reference manuals and resources, according to Tarr.

"I commit nothing to memory," he said.

Tarr enjoys serving in an investigative capacity, helping doctors track down symptoms that the patient can't feel or see on their own. He's traded army trucks and munitions for microscopes, test tubes and centrifuges. The attention to detail is stricter in the laboratory, he said.

Medical laboratory technicians check and re-check records as samples come through the lab and are tested. It is accounting for precious cargo. Tarr said he'd rather return no result at all to the doctor than return an invalid result.

"In the military, everything you use is a weapon so there's very little room for error. In the laboratory there is no room for error," he said.