In-plant Profiles

Deep inside a nondescript, two-story brick building in the center of Helena, Mont., Ryan Betcher ruminates about the days when the state’s Print & Mail Services Bureau was filled with printing presses, running eight hours a day.

Salla Vaerma-Jadlos has helped lead ReproMail for the City and County of San Francisco through good times and bad. She's been at the in-plant for 21 years and has seen the department achieve success in uncertain times for the printing industry.

Growing up in Missouri with an interest in art and history, Michael Jaffe admits a career in the Northern California graphic arts scene wasn't his original plan.

"I just kind of fell into printing," quips the supervisor of the General Services Unit for the Judicial Council of California, in San Francisco.

Ask Michael George what else he might have done with his life had he not become an in-plant manager and his answer comes quickly.

When Debbie Burke and her staff enter their hospital in-plant each day, one question constantly remains on their minds: 'What else can we do to better serve the hospital, its patients and its staff?'

As director of Printing, Mailing and Document Services for the University of Oklahoma—renowned for its storied Sooners football team, this year's Big 12 preseason favorite—John Sarantakos is used to thinking big and going long.

In his role as facility leader at the in-plant for Development Dimensions International, Inc. (DDI), Steve Horton is in a unique position. His in-plant not only prints materials for DDI, but also prints and ships products sold to DDI's customers worldwide.

Having turned an early interest in the graphic arts into a lifelong career, Gordon Rivera, coordinator of Campus Graphics at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, Calif., is still a big believer in the printing process.

The first thing he noticed was the door. A thick, wooden, swinging door, it separated the print shop from its customers in Arapahoe County's government offices, sending the clear message that no one but in-plant staff was allowed to pass.

When you sit down and talk with Donna Horbelt, you immediately feel like you've been friends for years. So it's no wonder that her engaging personality and the interest she takes in her customers has led them to view her in-plant at the University of Texas Heath Science Center at Houston as a supportive ally, committed to their success.