Valley duo ready for television debut

PALMER — Kelly Turney’s last year as a cop was a rough one.

Law enforcement in the Valley can, and often does, go for a year or more without having to fire a service weapon at a suspect. But 2012 saw at least four officer-involved shootings. In October, Alaska State Trooper Andrew Ballesteros was shot during a confrontation on Trunk Road. He survived, but Turney vividly recalls the radio traffic that night and the worry he felt.

But the late nights and the dangerous calls weren’t what drove him to retire from the Palmer Police Department at the start of the year.

“I liked when the phone rang because somebody needed help,” Turney said. “If the phone rang at 2 o’clock in the morning you knew something bad had happened and you were the one who needed to take care of it.”

No, what drove Turney into retirement after 14 years — 10 with the Palmer PD — is that he found a new passion.

“Did I ever think I would find something I loved more than being a cop? No,” he said.

But he did. And that something is picking — digging through old things to find the valuable stuff he can fix up and resell. Turney has been a picker, he said, since he and his mother used to go antiquing when he was a kid.

It’s only been in the past year that it has really taken off to the point where he can think of it as a business. He and his girlfriend, Becky Green, plan to run Alaska Picker from the old Fort Green building on Mayflower just off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. The plan is to move in Feb. 20 and open Feb. 27.

Oh, and they’re going to be on television.

Turney said the production company PSG Films approached him about an Alaska Picker television show. He’d known those who run the company already, though. It’s the same company that does the Alaska State Troopers show on The National Geographic Channel.

“At first I was like, ‘eh, I don’t know,’” Turney said.

He and Green talked it over, thought about it for two months. Then, in May last year, the snow was melting and he was running out of inventory. He had three picks lined up in the Delta Junction/Fairbanks area. So he called the film crew.

“You’re welcome to come along, but I gotta go,” he told them.

They took him up on the offer. Turney said that he sees the show as gravy, or as whipped cream on top of his picking cake. He’s not counting on getting famous. He said developed got his attitude toward it mainly from Green.

“They can come along, but we still have a business to run,” Turney recalls Green telling him.

He said that becoming a part of a TV show has been interesting. There isn’t any kind of a book for how to navigate the process and it’s a completely foreign world to him.

“My years as a cop were helpful in being able to sort out the B.S.,” he said.

But so far it’s been amazing. He has nothing but great things to say about the company, which helped them get to picks they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, most notably the pick in Dutch Harbor where Turney and Green were able to go through old warehouses untouched since the military pulled out at the end of World War II.

They came back with an old cast iron hand truck used to load cart munitions around. They’re going to make it into a coffee table.

Turney said that when they go out on picks it’s a family affair. Their girls get to buy things, fix them up and keep the profits.

“I like seeing what kids gravitate to,” Turney said.

He and Green have a symbiotic picking relationship.

“I’m the engine and she’s the brakes,” he said.

Which is to say, she keeps him in line.

“She’ll say, ‘you have too many chairs, you’re on chair restriction,’” Turney said.

And what about those other pickers, the American Pickers, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz on The History Channel?

Turney’s certainly a fan. He visited their store in Nashville to take mental notes on how the two men run their business. There’s a lot to learn there.

“They’ve got their A game every time they go out,” Turney said. “And how could you not strive for that?”

Lately, when he’s watched the show he wonders if they’ve gone soft

“Don’t get me wrong, they picked through enough squirrel (excrement) in their day,” Turney said.

But, Turney believes, Mike and Frank are picking through mostly collections these days rather than old barns and junk piles. Turney’s still in what you might call the squirrel excrement phase of his career.

“Becky’s running out because it’s rank, but I’m in there trying to find the snowshoe to match the one I already found,” he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.