POULSBO — A few short months isn’t a lot of time to travel down life’s road, but for some it’s enough time to figure out how to navigate the road ahead.
After an auto shop internship, one local young man knows this well.
“I always saw mechanics and everything under the hood as magic,” Anthony Woelke said upon the completion of his internship at DME Auto Service.
“Now it all makes sense to me.”
DME mechanics and representatives of Coffee Oasis celebrated the completion of Woelke’s internship on Nov. 15.
DME owner Keith Russell presented Woelke with a watch to commemorate the occasion.
The event marked the progress made in just a few short months — and the road that remains ahead for Woelke, who will now leave the garage for Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He plans to study mechanical engineering.
Woelke, 18, began his internship at DME Auto Service shortly after graduating from Kingston High School.
“Getting out of high school, I looked around for a job and I hung around Poulsbo and hung around Coffee Oasis,” he said.
It was at Coffee Oasis on Iverson Road in Poulsbo that Woelke heard of the job program the nonprofit offers to youth. The job training program helped him put together a resume, and helped him plan for the future.
Woelke figured Coffee Oasis could help point him in the right direction.
“At least I could have job training on my resume,” he said. “And an internship is
good to have too.”
Coffee Oasis’ program led Woelke to Poulsbo’s DME Auto Service, where he got his hands greasy working under the hood.
At first, Woelke learned the ropes around the garage, doing oil changes and shadowing mechanics.
Eventually, it came up in conversation that Woelke’s family had a rundown 1950 International truck at home, gathering rust.
“From that point on, the internship was (about) getting it up and running,” Woelke said.
The truck arrived at the garage on a trailer; Woelke drove it home last week. He worked on the brakes, rear end, differential, ignition system and the engine to get the old truck running and roadworthy.
Woelke said he knows the truck inside and out now — and knows the direction he wants to take in his life.
