Travis Stolle – Employment Success Story
Travis Stolle works at East Coast Lightning Equipment. He has been in this position for 4 years. “When I got the job, I was so happy and overwhelmed with joy.” Before this position he was employed at American Collar for 10 years and left because they didn’t have work for him.
Travis explained what he does in his position. We make all sorts of lightning protection products. We take something that doesn’t exist in the morning and transform by end of day. The foundry (people who make their parts and castings) make these parts in their furnaces with Liquid Metal. Bronze melts at 2400 degrees and aluminum at 1200 degrees. After they are out of the furnace, they pour the hot metal into the molds that makes their castings. We take the parts from the foundry in Winsted and create parts off them once they are cooled. We must wear safety equipment at work such as safety glasses, back belts, and ear plugs.
Travis found this position through LARC. Lori, his job coach, found it for him and helped him through the process. He was very nervous when first interviewed because he had never been interviewed before. There’s also an evaluation of employees that he did 2 years ago, and he was very nervous. They have harassment prevention trainings, safety trainings, and lifting trainings with back belts.
We talked about Travis’s relationships with his coworkers. He said “Most of my coworkers are cool. There’s one person I don’t particularly get along with, but I leave him alone. When I first started here, I was happy to be here of course. I’m able to do things now that I couldn’t do when I first started. I wasn’t allowed to change any of the machines over. I had to go get somebody. I wasn’t allowed to write my own labels. I had to go get somebody to write labels for labeling parts. I can do that now; I can also change the machine over to whatever part I’m making on my own without having to get somebody.”
What employment means to Travis: “I am happy to be employed. It means I can go out and do things that I like to do. I’m able to get things I want and live on my own which I wouldn’t be able to do if I didn’t have a job.” Travis said his favorite part of his job is that he likes to run the BB three machine and BF 100 machine. He has a job coach every week for a half hour on Friday. Her name is Lori.
Goals Travis wants to work towards are: Being able to learn more. He wants to learn how to run more machines so when he is done on one machine, he can go to the next machine and start working on it without waiting and doing nothing. He also wants to be able to learn how to do more things and so forth. Travis gets to work by taking the bus, or he rides his bike when feasible. It's 2 miles from his house.
Some hobbies Travis likes are: Riding his bike, using the computer, and going online, and when the time arises, he likes to go fishing occasionally. He also likes Karaoke.
Travis wants to thank all his coworkers for helping him out – Kevin Crowley and a big thank you to Mark and Jennifer Morgan for allowing him to work here.
Written by: Natasha Cole, Self-Advocate Coordinator 