After 18 years, Deb Polito is on to something new

MOSES LAKE - Deb Polito was in on the founding of the Boys and Girls Club.

Polito was the first employee and has worked every single job in the club in her 18 years. She will end her days at the club with a good-bye party in September, but Friday was her last day on the job. "Time for something new for me," she said.

"We'll miss Deb," Director Brant Mayo said.

Polito said it was a move back to Moses Lake that first got her involved in the effort to build a Boys and Girls Club. There was an organization for new people in town, and Polito was invited to the monthly luncheon. The speaker, Benaya Allison, was looking for volunteers to work on a new project.

"A small-scale auction to help raise funds for a Boys and Girls Club," Polito said. "I volunteered at that very first event."

She did some research on Boys and Girls Club and liked what she learned, she said. The organization required affiliates to have an organization in place and money in the bank before they could open, and Polito worked on the fundraising effort.

She set up the first office. "I was the first employee. At that point we didn't even have a clubhouse," she said.

The first Boys and Girls Club opened in a Larson Heights neighborhood in 1998, she said. Eventually the club moved to a location in downtown Moses Lake; now a new clubhouse is being built on Paxson Drive. The new club will have about 10,700 square feet, and club kids will have access to the playground, gym, play fields and computer lab at Park Orchard Elementary School.

That's a long way from the first club in Larson Heights. "I've worked every position there is in the club," Polito said.

The Boys and Girls Club wasn't just a job. "What's kept me here is my love for the work. I believe in what the club does." The club provides support for the kids who spend time there, for their parents and for families in general. "I just believe in what it stands for," Polito said.

"Fabulous organization," she said.

Boys and Girls Club has been around Moses Lake long enough that its original members have grown up, started their careers, started families. Some of them bring their children to the Boys and Girls Club. "Our club kids' kids. That's very exciting," Polito said.

"This has definitely been a really good job," Polito said.

But the club is moving into a new building and "it's a good time to bring someone on with new fresh ideas and new energy," Polito said.

"They've given me a good life, this place," she said. "And now they've grown me up and I'm ready to move on."

She's not sure what she will move on to, she said. "I'm not in a big hurry to fill that with anything," she said. Polito is an artist, and one of her goals is to do more painting, she said.

"It (painting) is one of those things you lose yourself in and you find yourself at the same time," she said in an earlier interview.

Polito said she has been interested in art all her life, but over time she quit painting to concentrate on her family and her job. A few years ago she did a painting for her son-in-law, and his reaction to it prompted her to start painting again, she said.

There will be some painting, some crafts and other projects, and something, sometime, she said. It starts with the first weekday morning after the job. "I'm going to have coffee in one of those big old 'I'm not going go work' mugs," she said.