Washington County

Tell me about her because I already like where this is headed.

She moved from Prince George's County to Western Maryland back in 2000 while still communing to a job in Washington, learned English herself in Cuba, became a Spanish interpreter and translator, and eventually built ICTM from that experience.

So she built the exact business she once needed herself.

That's the best kind of founder story, when the gap you're filling is a gap you lived through.

ICTM now provides interpretation and translation to schools and health care providers all along the I-81 corridor, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia.

Since 2005, she's worked directly with Washington County Public Schools, helping parents get through conferences and special education meetings in their own language.

That's not a nice to have, Chessie.

That's the difference between a parent actually understanding their kid's care plan or just nodding along confused.

And that's really kind of where the focus is.

And Washington County has this sliver this sliver that just divides between Pennsylvania and West Virginia that you could walk.

You could walk that in a day fairly...

I want to say it's only like 10 miles, 12 miles.

I mean, because you do see a lot of those tales where people are like laid out, you know, before embalming or people are like held, you know, in one of the, you know, vaults, you know, until they can dig and You know, there's a lot of evidence that that actually did happen and still does happen sometimes.

And I wonder, too, because the region, it was kind of on the edge of a lot of funerary practices, which is a weird thing to think about as a regional aspect.

But say the first crematory in the United States was not far off Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Oh, I get really upset.

And that was just a core component that I think is just vital and something that should be promoted, especially in today's world.

Lots of corporate this and that happening to have a family business be still so true to, you know, our Hagerstown, Washington County roots while expanding into that D.C. market, maintaining that feel, that culture, all that stuff.

You know, we've talked about it.

You know, I think I believe this is our 80th episode, actually.

A post office.

Washington County, Maryland.

LeDuc.

LeDuc.

And so an understanding of why this really mattered and why we felt like this was really a piece of infrastructure that needed to be invested in was really the foundational piece of that.

honestly it probably took four of the five years to actually solidify even that to really truly have dug into it far enough to really understand what what what the real purpose here is but in the end of things this the sole purpose of this honestly is to improve access to to food and particularly a wider variety of food and to hopefully do so at a lower cost than what folks in the downtown hagerstown area currently have available within the community, right? You know, as an independent grocer, we will not be the lowest, the lowest priced food source in Hagerstown, Washington County.

That's not honestly, that's not how the industry works.

But we do believe that with the operating model that we've put together, including the advantage that we are operating this as a nonprofit and to be fully transparent, and this was one of the change pieces that everybody had to wrap their heads around, this project, unlike our thrift stores where we do intentionally try to generate surplus revenue that we use to then pay for all of our mission staff and the programming and the support services that we offer so that folks don't have to, you know, they can access those free of charge, this grocery store is budgeted break even.

So we don't have to worry about populating the spreadsheet over here or the PDF over here and somebody having to compile this.

And then we build a tool.

And we just populate that tool to all the organizations and say, if you want this, this is, you know, this is the tool that will find you the information and will tell you which agency in Washington County is providing the service.

And here's their hours and here's when you can go.

I'm a homer.

Grew up here in Washington County in Smithsburg.

Have two lovely daughters, grown daughters now.

Last one's in her last year in college and my beautiful wife of 30 years.

But cross country or any sort of running was never anything in the purview of what I was setting out or trying to want to do.

Somewhere later...

Down the road, a good friend of mine mentions about a soccer program, a soccer league here in Washington County in Hagerstown somewhere and got me back into it.

It was a good friend from high school, actually, that played with me and got me back into it and started getting in shape.

Most areas beneath reported formations have not experienced unusual weather.

Residents in parts of Franklin County, Pennsylvania and Washington County, Maryland, however, describe sudden warmth beneath persistent bands despite ordinary temperatures nearby.

Utilities are investigating transformer alarms reported under the longest lasting formation near the state line.

A utility spokesperson says equipment temperatures rose beyond expected operating levels at three separate sites.