Part 2 of the occasional series Job Hustle.

Tyler Evans and his wife and children moved to Wallowa County five years ago. The two had vacationed here as children and continued the tradition as they became a couple and had children. During a working vacation Evans had a revelation.

“I was working on my laptop while sitting on top of the (east) moraine and it kind of dawned on me: ‘You know what? It doesn’t matter where I am anymore. With cell technology and the Internet I don’t need to be in a gray cubicle in Hillsboro.”

NetApp agreed, and Evans moved his family to Wallowa County within months.

Evans doesn’t hold down more than one job to live in the county, but he is probably the first part of a wave of people who telecommute. He works at home from a computer for a company located in Sunnyvale Calif. He is also a member of the Joseph City Council.

Born in Pendleton, Evans moved as a boy with his family to the Portland area. Upon graduation from high school Evans attended the University of Oregon where he graduated with majors in finance, business and psychology. He focused on organizational psychology as a career and after graduation moved back to Portland and worked in the investment industry before going to work at Intel. He eventually found work with a company later bought by NetApp, a networking and storage company.

“I was fortunate to be able to bring a job with me. I don’t think I could live here if I had to find a job here with my skill set and what I was making in Portland,” Evans said of a lack of viable full-time employment in the county. “I think in general there is a definite lack of jobs to support a family whether it’s one or two jobs,” he said.

Evans thought the lack of such jobs was because of the geography and infrastructure of the area.

“Sheer distance in terms of shipping product into the county to convert to a higher value and ship back out will be difficult to be competitive because of the transportation costs. You have to look into services and businesses not as dependent on heavy haul trucking to get things done,” he said.

What Evans suggests for practical living wage jobs for the area are things such as call centers and technical writing.

“Things like that are pretty easy to do. I know a guy in Enterprise who does digital rendering for the movie industry. It doesn’t matter where you are to do that kind of work,” he said.

A good start to attracting those kinds of jobs to the county would be for the county to focus on those types of businesses and how the area can market itself to digital or online industries, says Evans. He also suggests sporting and outdoor goods because the area attracts outdoor enthusiasts

“Knife makers such as Benchmade or Buck – something small and in touch with the outdoors. The hunting and fishing industry may resonate well, especially if they want a high quality of life for their employees,” he said.

In the meantime, Evans isn’t sure where the responsibility for procuring employers lies.

“Is it the city’s job, the county chamber of commerce’s job, the city chamber of commerce’s job? I think that’s what we first need to look at,” he said.

Seth Kinzie is a Joseph resident who makes his living as a musician and as a custom website designer. Born in Seattle, Kinzie spent much of his youth moving from place to place as his mother worked as a preacher for the Church of the Brethren. His father was a musician and the family eventually settled in Los Angeles.

Kinzie never forgot the Northwest, and as soon as he graduated high school he moved back to Portland, where he attended Lewis and Clark College. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and also studied Vietnamese culture.

After some traveling, including working for Monks Without Borders, Kinzi obtained work at a transportation data collection firm in Portland,

After what Kinzie called “a quarter-life crisis at 25,” he moved to the Wallowa Valley to start life anew. He started out working making beds and mowing lawns for one of the cabin rental businesses and eventually got carpal tunnel, which severely curtailed his piano playing for a time. He then took a job at the Lostine Tavern washing dishes because he needed the money.

Kinzie works part times as a musician who also gives lessons and writes songs. He also is a web designer for the local company Develop Easy.

“It’s a good outlet to focus on the arts and there’s an element of creativity. I now have 100 percent employment as a 29 year-old. May it never end,” he said with a laugh.

Kinzie doesn’t necessarily think there’s a shortage of work in the county, if you’re willing to make a few sacrifices.

“Maybe if you’re looking for a solid 9-5 job with benefits, those are hard to come by. If you want to live out here and you’re dedicated to it, you can make it work. If you mix and match with a few different things you’ll find it’s possible,” he said.

More people are moving to Wallowa County according to Kinzie. He cited young people in particular, who have creative ideas about what they want to do but need to consider the local populace.

“I don’t think they should live their dream out here without consulting the community. They need to realize there’s an established community of people here, some who are similar and some very different. They don’t need to necessarily get their permission, but get their support before embarking on creative pursuits. This is a small town and we need to maintain the harmony here,” he said.

Kinzie said he’d like to see green energy jobs such as manufacturing solar panels come to the county, or businesses such as the small ceramics/brewery furniture factory Wallowa County native Tyler Hays plans to establish, using as many local resources as possible.

Improving the local economy with full-time work would be a good thing for the county if forethought is put into it, according to Kinzie.

“I don’t think anyone wants a big factory out here. You have to be smart about keeping what we have out here – that the open space we like stays open – but we need jobs out here,” he said.