'IF YOU WANT IT, GO FOR IT!'
Peggy Henn left a 45-year customer service career 
to become an environmental inspector

Peggy Henn started at SD1 in 2013 as a full-time temp in Customer Care. She liked her job and enjoyed helping customers, but when an opportunity opened at Humana two years later, she took it.

She almost immediately had regrets.

About a month later, she ran into her former coworker, Todd Denham, at Panera Bread and told him she didn't like the new job and would love to come back to SD1 "in a heartbeat."

"A couple days later, he called me and asked if I was really serious about it, and I said yes," Peggy says. "I told him I'd walk out right now if you want me to."

SD1 offered Peggy her job back and she was thrilled to return. "I enjoyed the work," she says. "Knowing where you stood. Knowing that what they tell you you're going to do is what you're doing."

She had spent her whole career helping customers, previously at Schneider Electric. "I love talking with customers," she says. "Trying to help resolve their issues. If they couldn't make their payment, trying to figure out what we could do to help them either get a lower amount to pay over a period of time or direct them to an agency that can help them. Just being able to help them."

She was in Customer Care for nearly a decade until last fall, when she started craving something new. SD1 was looking for an Environmental Inspector, and though Peggy had no direct experience in that area, the position intrigued her.

"It was something challenging and new," she says. "I talked to Kevin [Hunter] (an Environmental Inspector at SD1 for the past 15 years and it just seemed like it would be cool to be able to go out and to that."

SD1's Environmental Inspectors visit residential and commercial construction sites to ensure that SD1 rules and regulations are being followed and that best management practices (BMPs) are put in place and maintained to address sediment erosion and other construction-related issues.

Last November, Peggy applied and got an interview.

"I just put down my past experience in customer service," she says. "And when I told Kevin my interview is in about two weeks, he gave me a book about environmental inspection and I read it front to back."

When Peggy still didn't feel fully prepared for her interview, she dragged her husband Tim to construction sites around Campbell County. 

"I knew where they were building," she says. "So we went to Arcadia, we visited a new subdivision on Poplar Ridge and we went out to Parkside. We went to the Beverly Hills site. And I'd get out and walk around and say, 'Now according to what I'm reading, this is what it's supposed to look like.' And we would try to find these things and see what they actually looked like. See what they meant by having 'socks' or a 'silt fence.' Because I had no idea what a silt fence was."

Peggy said visiting these sites made all the difference.

"Seeing it in a picture or reading about it was so much different than actually going out and looking at it," she says. "And I'm thinking this thing just looks like a piece of fabric. It really doesn't look like a fence to me. But that's because the sediment can't get through it."

Peggy studied the rules and regulations; she researched how long it takes sediment to get into a basin, and how and where it enters local waterways.

She impressed her interviewers with her level of preparedness.

"There was a point in the interview where Jason Burlage was asking me questions, and then there was this long pause," she says. "I remember thinking...am I supposed to say something more?"

After a moment of awkward silence, she added, "Do you want me to say more?"

"Jason looked over at Janeen [Rutherford], and she kind of tossed her pen down and said, 'You just wowed me.' And I was kind of wowed by that. I'd floored her. I don't know if anybody had ever gone through the depth of...not wanting to just make a good impression but actually wanting the job."

And she got it.

Peggy has been an Environmental Inspector for about three months now, and she says her favorite thing about the new role is "everything."

"Yes - everything," she gushes. "Oh my gosh. The people are so...eager to make sure you're OK. They make sure that if I need something, I've got it. I don't even know how to explain it - Kevin is a total lifeline. I could not give him enough praises. He has just been phenomenal."

The transition hasn't been as difficult as Peggy imagined. After all, she had been working at a desk for 45 years.

So far, her biggest challenge has been learning to read plans. "When you go to a site, some of them are really easy to read, but others look like a bunch of chicken scratch to me," she says. "I told Kevin it looks like my 2-year-old grandson drew some of these plans."

Peggy lights up when she talks about the opportunity SD1 has given her to pivot careers. "They were willing to give me a chance," she says. "They're willing to take somebody and put them in a role without a college degree and without any background other than being able to talk to people.

"I tell people all the time, 'If you want it, go for it. And you've got to start with the interview. You've got to do your research and your homework and show them that you mean business. All they can do is tell you no. And even if they tell you no, you can go back and look at what you can do better next time."