The Columbian | Serving Clark County, Washington

When Lindsay Wack left Vancouver nearly 12 years ago, she knew she would be back.

Clark County has too much to offer, too many things she would miss — the Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival, movies in the park, the Christmas tree lighting in Esther Short Park.

So after obtaining her degree in 2002 from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wack moved back to the area. A few years later she got married and did so with a little “Vancouver flair.”

Wack, who is now Lindsay Herling, was married at a local historic venue, The Academy. She used Clark County vendors and bought the flowers at the farmers market. Her save-the-date cards were “Greetings from Vancouver” postcards with photos of different locations across town. Her invitations featured a black-and-white photo of The Academy and included a hand-drawn map of places to visit in Vancouver. Her out-of-town wedding guests received goodie bags that included “I (heart) America’s Vancouver” bumper stickers and guidebooks to local sites.

“I sometimes get a little teased for my passion for this city,” Herling said.

But for the 29-year-old, Vancouver has always been, and will always be, home. So she never hesitated to move back to the area as a young adult ready to begin her career — and she’s not alone.

But had Herling graduated from college a decade or more earlier, she would have been an exception to the norm.

Clark County has historically experienced a significant dip in the number of 20-somethings living in the area, said Scott Bailey, a regional economist for the Washington Employment Security Department. A look at the number of 10- to 14-year-olds in the county in 1980 compared with the number of 20- to 24-year-olds in 1990 showed a decrease of 15 percent to 16 percent, Bailey said.

“So it was as if people grew up here, went away to college, had fun somewhere and moved back,” he said. “This wasn’t much of a magnet for people in their 20s who were young, single and wanted to go out to clubs at night.”

That, Bailey said, has changed. The shift means more highly educated people are joining the local work force and, eventually, the professional jobs graduates desire will make their way to the region as well, said Lisa Nisenfeld, executive director of the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of people in their 20s living in Clark County has slowly climbed and the gap has filled. The number of 10- to 14-year-olds in Clark County in 1999 compared with the number of 20- to 24-year-olds in 2009 yielded no difference, Bailey said. But that’s not to say people aren’t leaving and not returning; it just means the number of young adults leaving is offset by the number moving to the area.

Bailey said his only theory as to why the number of young adults living in the area has increased is the addition of the Washington State University Vancouver campus in Salmon Creek. The campus opened in 1996 and 10 years later began offering lower-level courses and accepting first- and second-year students.

The number of county students obtaining college degrees, either locally or elsewhere, has meant the education level of Clark County residents has increased. The number of Clark County residents with bachelor’s degrees or higher is rising every year, but, Bailey said, the county is still well below the state and national averages.

In 1990, only 16.8 percent of county residents had earned a bachelor’s degree or greater, compared with 23.6 percent in the Portland metro area, 22.9 percent in the state and 20.3 percent in the United States. During the next two decades, those percentages climbed across the board. In 2008, 25.7 percent of local residents had bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with 33.3 percent in the Portland metro area, 30.7 in the state and 27.7 percent in the nation, according to statistics Bailey provided.

People who have obtained four-year degrees are usually looking for professional jobs in fields such as engineering, sciences, legal and accounting, Bailey said. Outside of the education and health care fields, which are everywhere, Vancouver offers fewer professional jobs than other cities, he said. That’s when being part of a bigger region — the Portland-Vancouver metro area — pays off, Bailey said.

“They might not move back here for a job in Clark County but to live here and commute to Portland for work, which roughly one-third of the county does on a daily basis,” he said.

And those who grew up in Clark County and move back to begin or continue their careers are valued by employers, Nisenfeld said.

“If they’re going to be invested in hiring and training a person they are always interested in someone with a commitment (to the area) because they won’t be so footloose,” she said. “It points to stability, long-term trainability and all those things people like.”

But it’s oftentimes not the job market encouraging people to move back to the area — it’s the community.

“People in the Northwest don’t understand what they’ve got going until they go somewhere else, especially in Clark County where it’s a community you can put your arms around,” Nisenfeld said.

People come to the area because of the quality schools, to be closer to their families and to be part of a community that is big enough to offer a range of opportunities but not so big people get lost, she said.

Vancouver resident Brooke (Weagant) Vitasovic, 29, moved back to her hometown after realizing nowhere else she lived provided the quality of life Vancouver offers. Rachael Wilson, 23, moved back with plans to work and get her teaching certificate so she can return to Vancouver Public Schools as an elementary school teacher.

And for Hazel Dell resident Mike Bomar, it was the amenities of Clark County, including its close proximity to mountains and beaches, that lured him back. When he left in 1997 to attend college and then went on to play minor league baseball, he didn’t expect to return to the area. But a degree and an injury altered his plans. As he was pursuing his master’s degree at Washington State University Vancouver, he realized he wanted to be in Clark County.

Whatever the reasons may be, Bailey said the fact that natives are returning to the county with degrees is encouraging.

“It’s certainly a validation that the area is a good place to live, not only for its community aspect but for its economic viability,” he said.

The current economic downturn has had an impact, though it hasn’t completely deterred people from locating here, Nisenfeld said. More people are struggling to find professional jobs and many recent college graduates are accepting jobs in other sectors until the economy rebounds, she said.

“People continue to come even though the region is reeling from job loss and the recession,” Nisenfeld said. “People are willing to try and make lives here because they believe the jobs will come back.”

But if those jobs don’t return, bright local kids may not either.

“It just comes down to jobs,” Bomar said. “We need to make sure there are jobs here for people who grew up here and want to come back.”

Marissa Harshman: marissa.harshman@columbian.com.

Getting back to where they once belonged

Some Clark County natives move back to the area to launch their careers. Others love the community and all it has to offer. And some want to live near their relatives and start their own families.

Whatever the reasons, more 20-somethings are coming back to Clark County after leaving the area to further their education. The Columbian requested to hear from some of those local graduates and received nearly two dozen responses from alumni of many high schools — Hudson’s Bay, Prairie, Fort Vancouver, Evergreen, Camas, Battle Ground — but nearly half of the responses were from former Chieftains of Columbia River High School.

Here are the stories of four local graduates who were selected as an example of the range in professions and reasons for coming back to Clark County.

Lindsay (Wack) Herling

Age: 29.

Family: Husband of more than two years, Evan.

Schools: Felida Elementary School, Alki Middle School, Columbia River High School (Class of 1998).

College: Western Washington University (2002), degree in public communications.

Returned to Clark County: 2003.

Current residence: Vancouver.

Current job: Assistant director of development at Washington State University Vancouver’s development and alumni relations department. Prior to that, worked at the Clark County YMCA, J.D. White Company and coached cheerleading at Columbia River High School for six years.

Why moved back to Clark County: The sense of community and family. The amount of philanthropy and the number of people who volunteer and participate in community events is exciting, Herling said. “Just how much people care about their neighbors, their schools and each other is amazing.”

Clark County memories: Playing miniature golf at Steakburger, cosmic bowling, swimming at Lakeshore Athletic Club and roller-skating at Golden Skate.

Quotable: “Because people have been around so long, they take ownership in living here and make this a community that everyone wants to be a part of.”

Rachael Wilson

Age: 23.

Schools: Felida Elementary School, Alki Middle School, Columbia River High School (Class of 2004).

College: Washington State University Pullman (2008), degree in psychology.

Returned to Clark County: 2008.

Current residence: Vancouver.

Current job: Reception and marketing for Summer Place Assisted Living in Portland. Wilson plans to attend graduate school in Portland to obtain her master’s degree in education and wants to teach in Vancouver schools.

Why moved back to Clark County: Family, plenty of job opportunities and familiarity with the area.

Clark County memories: Playing in fields that are now filled with houses, adventures in her Felida neighborhood and volleyball tournaments in middle and high school.

Quotable: “I love the Vancouver area. It’s home to me.”

Mike Bomar

Age: 30.

Family: Wife of more than two years, Audri, and an 8-month-old daughter.

Schools: Maple Grove Primary School and Laurin Middle School. Bomar’s family then moved to Denver for two years but returned to the area and Bomar attended Prairie High School his junior and senior year (Class of 1997).

College: Baseball scholarship to University of Washington (2001), degree in political science; Washington State University Vancouver (2005), master’s degree in public affairs. Bomar played for the San Diego Padres’ minor league team, the Eugene Emeralds, in Eugene, Ore., for one season before an arm injury ended his career.

Returned to Clark County: 2004.

Current residence: Hazel Dell.

Current job: Public affairs director for the Building Industry Association of Clark County and pitching coach for Prairie High School’s baseball team.

Why moved back to Clark County: The community and amenities, such as proximity to the ocean and mountains.

Clark County memories: Hanging out with friends on Larch Mountain and spending the summer playing baseball, particularly the Fourth of July baseball tournaments held at Clark College.

Quotable: “My goal is to stay here and give to the community as much as I can and make it a better place.”

Brooke (Weagant) Vitasovic

Age: 29.

Family: Husband of nearly six years, Luka; pregnant with the couple’s first child.

Schools: Hazel Dell Elementary School, Jason Lee Middle School, Columbia River High School (Class of 1998).

College: University of Washington (2002), degrees in political science and society and justice; Pepperdine University School of Law (2005).

Returned to Clark County: 2006.

Current residence: Vancouver; purchasing a home in Ridgefield.

Current job: Criminal defense attorney handling Clark County misdemeanor treatment court cases and general felony defense.

Why moved back to Clark County: Quality of life. The traffic and cost of living in other places was “outrageous,” Vitasovic said. The people in Clark County are friendlier, and the Portland-Vancouver area offers a variety of activities, she said.

Clark County memories: Visiting Steakburger for milkshakes and games of miniature golf.

Quotable: “I don’t think that I would appreciate living here if I hadn’t moved away. When I was in high school and I was a teenager, I wanted out of here. … If I hadn’t done those things, I wouldn’t appreciate all those little things. It’s the quality of life that was lacking in those (other) areas.”

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