Vol. 10 No. 3 — Summer 2009
Employee Spotlight: Telea Noriega
For over three and a half years, Telea Noriega has worked at The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc. making airplane parts for The Boeing Company. Starting out in the production finishing area, deburring parts to remove rough edges from metal parts, he has advanced to the machine shop where he is an operator working with manual Bridgeport machining mills. “I never knew anything about machinery, how machines work, and how you can take a plain sheet of metal and make something complex. It’s very exciting to know that I have learned to do that, and do it well,” he says.
Born blind on the South Pacific Island of Samoa, he was adopted at the age of ten by Peace Corps volunteers who were building the first school on the island for blind children. In 1977, after their work with the Peace Corps finished, his parents moved to southern Oregon, where Telea was excited to attend school. The children and teachers hadn’t had experience with a blind student before, and Telea remembers that the most difficult part of his school day was accessing the materials he needed to study. Some books were available on tape, and a few were available in braille, but he primarily worked with a reader who translated for him. “They were learning from me as much as I was learning from them,” Telea remembers.
After graduating high school, Telea attended the University of Oregon for several years, but decided to relocate to Washington to be closer to family. After arriving in the Puget Sound region, Telea attended Seattle Massage School and graduated as a licensed massage technician. He joined a chiropractor’s office in Des Moines, where he worked for over a year as a masseuse. Ready for a change, Telea relocated to Iowa, where he lived for almost a year before he met his wife. Together they moved back to Oregon, where he found work as a telemarketer for six months before they moved north to Washington.
Telea’s favorite part about working at the Lighthouse is how personable and friendly his coworkers are. “Everyone has been so easy to get along with, and I enjoy working with them,” Telea remarks. “The thing that has really made an impression on me is that I didn’t like being around blind people before I came to the Lighthouse. There are a lot of things about people that you learn and get to know when you are working with them. We are all here because of one reason or another.”
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