EVERETT — The diesel mechanics and precision machining students could relate to the 30-something mill worker who appeared before them with gold-colored earrings and close-cropped hair beneath his ball cap.
They laughed when he told them he’s just “a mill-billy” with two left feet who knew there was no escaping an invitation to a father-daughter ball.
They nodded when he talked about seeing his son’s determined smirk in the batter’s box.
And they watched and listened intently as he unscrewed the claw that serves as his left hand and explained how he lost his arm in a lumber mill accident more than 15 years ago.
On days off from his Longview paper mill job, Matt Pomerinke crisscrosses the state, talking to young students and workers about safety on the job site. He does so through a state Department of Labor and Industries program aimed at reaching the 16- to 24-year-old demographic. Young people have up to twice the work-related injury rates of other ages.
Last week, Pomerinke returned to the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center south of Everett for the second time in a month to talk with another group of students.
Maggie Bagwell, assistant director of the skills center, said Pomerinke shares a powerful story that reaches students.
“It makes a difference,” she said. “Kids remember it. It makes a huge impact.”
Pomerinke was 21 when the accident occurred in January of 1999. He was young and fast and seemed invincible. That night, he was cleaning up at the end of his swing shift sorting boards as they came by on conveyors.
He noticed a stick wedged on the chain conveyor belt. When he reached for it, he lost his balance for a split second. His hickory shirt got wrapped into the chain. Like a rope, it yanked his arm into the machinery.
He can still remember the smell, see the blood and hear the crunching sounds of his shattering bones. In some ways, it seemed as though it was all in slow motion. For a time, he wasn’t sure if he was screaming out loud or if it was all in his head.
A co-worker, a friend from kindergarten, hit the cut-off button and an alarm before breaking into tears, his head in his hands.
Another co-worker, a former locker partner in middle school, used a belt to place a tourniquet around Pomerinke’s mangled arm.
It took 20 minutes for the paramedics to arrive and another 25 to remove him from the machinery.
Pomerinke told a friend to break the news to his fiance.
“He got to go break that 20-year-old’s heart,” he said.
At the hospital, he was given an option and little time to decide. He could either keep his arm with no hope it would ever be of any use or he could have it amputated and learn to use a prosthetic limb.
He opted for the latter.
“We are going to give you a viable stump,” Pomerinke remembers a doctor telling him.
It took 10 months for Pomerinke to return to the workforce, but there are much longer-lasting effects.
He lost contact with childhood friends. He knows they have flashbacks of the gruesome scene when they see him so he tries to give them some distance.
“It affects you, your family, your friends, your co-workers and it lasts forever,” Pomerinke told the Sno-Isle students.
These days, he works at Kapstone Paper and Packaging in Longview. His dad works there, too, just as Pomerinke’s grandfather had done before him.
He gives his son, now 11, baseball tips. When he demonstrates a stance and swing, his motion stops prematurely. The prosthetic won’t let him break his left wrist.
He told the Sno-Isle students to figure out what they want to do when they get home from work each day and to remember how many people care about them.
He urged them to get all the training they can on the job and not to worry about asking questions — something he was hesitant to do as a young worker.
And he asked them to look out for their co-workers.
In his case, that has meant checking on and calling out his own dad for safety lapses at the paper mill from time to time.
“Everyone has someone they want to come home and see,” he said. “Help them get there.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com
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