Dear UTOVacation Associate:

The greatest accomplishment is that which has the most meaningful, healthy effect on the person(s) served.  As Public Works Director and Engineer for a large rural county in Arizona, I take pride in maintaining and improving roads for the public good.  However, there was one circumstance where I struck a warm relationship with a family living off a dirt road in a remote area.  One of their children had a severe neuromuscular handicap causing pain with any jarring movement.  The child required frequent medical treatment, and literally the most difficult and painful part was traveling on the bumpy dirt road to and from the family's house.  To that end, I was determined to remove that unnecessary obstacle for the child.  I worked tirelessly in completing a project to widen and pave the road to the family's house and make for a completely paved route to wherever the child had to travel.  It was a small project in stature and expense, but the satisfaction I gained from making a real difference in a child's life - and in light of her disability - far exceeded that of any multi-million dollar infrastructure project I engineered.

Few civil infrastructure improvements provide benefits toward rural public health, safety, and welfare and rural economies as improving unsurfaced (dirt) or gravel to hard/paved surface condition.  This proved a special project using an engineered approach that delivered a hard/paved surface at fraction of typical road construction projects.  This made for the opportunity to improve the residential road, Smith Road, while also not impacting one of the most diverse and dense Joshua Tree forests in the world! 

Attached are photos showing the before (unsurfaced - note the washboard/bumpy condition) and after (paved) improvement.

Respectfully submitted,

Steven Latoski