Working 'For the Kids'

Hale dove head first into the in-plant business when her husband, who works for Nortel, was transferred to Denver.

"We were given a choice: Denver or North Carolina," says Hale, whose family had lived in Arizona since before it was a state. "But where's the choice there?"

So Colorado it was. Hale picked up her first management gig in July of 1989, running an in-plant for the Denver Regional Council of Government. While she was there, she got a tip from her boss that Douglas County School District, in Castle Rock, Colo., was looking for someone to fill the shoes of the shop's long-time in-plant manager, a 72-year-old woman who had decided it was time to retire.