Youth spotlight: Quincy students turn raw materials into legacy for Quincy hospital

QUINCY — The old Quincy Valley Medical Center had a few trees next to the parking lot, including three pine trees planted in – well, back in the day, not long after the hospital was built in the late 1950s. The way the new hospital had to fit on the lot meant they were in the way, and they had to come down. 

That led to an opportunity for the Quincy High School advanced construction class. 

Career and technical education is a focus at QHS, with a lot of different classes and opportunities, from firefighting to agriculture to certified nursing assistant training. Advanced construction teacher Nick Heuker said Tom Richardson, QVMC director of information services, contacted QHS to see if there might be a use for the wood from those pine trees.

“It was a random phone call,” Heuker said. “And through a conversation with Tom, we got kind of the gist of what they were looking for from us, and we just went from there. That was three years ago now, when that conversation started. It’s been my entire teaching career that I’ve been building this project and guiding kids to get it done.”

The project eventually selected was a new table for the conference room. 

“Teacher-led but student-built,” Heuker told the QVMC commissioners when he talked with them in May 2022. “I’m there to make sure it gets done correctly, but the students will be doing the (majority) of the work.”   

Students went to the site and selected the trees, and they chose well, Heuker said.

“Me and eight students went out to the site one morning and picked the two that we thought were the best, and marked them out,” Heuker said. “I don’t know how we got so lucky with those trees. By definition, the most perfect trees for building. They were not prone to the typical problems that pine has.”

The raw logs were milled by a professional, and the students got to work on the design. The QVMC commissioners gave the students some general ideas on their preferred design, and the construction students took it from there.

“I had a group of 18 students on it at that time that helped with the design process and determining how much material we would need,” Heuker said. “(The students) got to decide how they wanted the legs to look, how they wanted the apron to be connected, what kind of edge profiles they wanted.” 

The milled boards came back to QHS construction shop, and there they sat for the 2023-24 school year.

“We took a big pause the next year, because the material was soaking wet, “Heuker said.

That was the state of the project when students entered the construction class in September 2024 – they had a stack of wood in the corner and a spring 2025 deadline.

“We had a big pile of lumber sitting in the back, and I said, ‘We have to turn this into a table.’ And it was a giant pile of lumber,” Heuker said. “Those slabs started at 16 feet long, three and a half feet wide, three inches thick.”

The first task was to cut the pieces to roughly the proper dimensions; that was Heuker’s job. Most of the rest of the work was up to the class, with the help of some experts.

Even wood that’s dried properly can warp or twist, and junior Ambrosio Roque said the first job was to correct that. 

“We took it to Timberdog to flatten it out,” Roque said.

Timberdog Slab Designs is a Wenatchee-based furniture manufacturer and owner Chris Piepel was a big help, Heuker said.

“He allowed me to bring 16 students to his place of business and basically stopped work and taught them all about the flattening process, the drying process, what happens if you take too much off the first time, all of it. He took that time out of his own day, his (own) business,” Heuker said.

With any warping fixed, junior Jade Guerrero said the students cut the pieces to the finished size and did the assembly. Roque said it took about seven months to finish, and it was finished on time for the opening of the new QVMC in mid-May.

Typically the advanced construction class is focused on tasks like framing and roofing, so finish carpentry was a new challenge. Sophomore Kathy Martinez said she learned she had to be precise when taking measurements and cutting, since mismeasurement in one section would affect the entire construction process. 

Guerrero was in charge of adding the finish coats, which took a lot of sanding and drying time, she said.

“It’s not very often an opportunity like this arises,” Heuker said. 

Becoming a teacher was always his goal, Heuker said, but he worked in construction during breaks from his classes at Central Washington University.

“I worked for a contractor. We were a rough construction company and we built lots of houses. I built houses ranging from two-bed cottages to mansions,” he said.

Eventually he moved to Ellensburg full-time, and found a job with a specialty cabinetmaker, Cedar Mountain Woodwrights. His students have lived up to the traditions of craftsmanship, he said.

“As a professional in the custom furniture industry in the past, ‘proud’ would be an understatement,” Heuker said. “These kids were exposed to something wildly outside their realm and created a masterpiece.”

Guerrero and Martinez started taking shop classes in middle school, liked them and decided on the construction classes when starting high school. Roque opted for a construction class as a freshman. All three said it might or might not be a career, and Heuker said the goal of the high school’s CTE program is to give students some options. 

“When you walk into a facility like the ones we have in the Quincy School District, it’s unbelievable the amount of support we get from our community and our CTE teams. We offer a level of CTE courses that’s unseen across the state,” he said.

    Students in Quincy High School’s advanced construction class show off their handiwork, a table built from the pine trees that once grew outside the Quincy Valley Medical Center.
 COURTESY PHOTO/NICK HEUKER   

    The top shows the craftsmanship Quincy students put into the legacy project for the Quincy hospital.
 COURTESY PHOTO/NICK HEUKER