Monika Grupp:  

I have spent the last 12 years as a state employee...Yikes! Initially, after college I was working as a pre-Kindergarten teacher at a day care in Redmond WA making a little more than minimum wage, which on the "eastside" of king county is poverty level. I then got a job with in my degree, working at Echo Glen Children's Center, which is a lovely name for a juvenile prison. I spent three months there working intermittent schedule, until I was hired perminant at another juvenile institution with an equally deceptive name of Indian Ridge youth camp. I worked there for 3 years, where I received a street wise education by the boys that were serving time there. I learned how to make home made alcohol from fruit juice, they called that pruno, I learned that these young boys improvise very well, they will roll cigarettes from stolen tabacco and bible pages and make their own sex toys called fifi's...YUK. I learned a lot of defensive tactics as these boys were not the nicest kids all the time and how to track them if they escaped...Being a Yelm girl came in handy for that. I then went to work in the community as a jvuenile parole office and spent 7 years doing that. Once I decided to move to Pierce County I got a job with the Department of Corrections and have been working as a "parole officer" although it's called Community Corrections Officer now,for the last five years. I am currently working in Pierce County Sex Offender supervision unit.