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For Hobson, it's cool to be back home

Kurtis J. Wood/sports@qvpr.com
June 24, 2010

Stephen Hobson is known around the Quincy Valley for being an expert ‘fix-it’ man.

For Stephen Hobson, inspiration came through the air conditioning vents of a harobed havester.

The George native was working for local farmer Terry Berens and thought it was about time he sought out a career.

It then came to him like an Arctic wave.

“When I was working after I got out of school, my goal was to pretty much get a career. I remember sitting in a harobed one day and it was 100 degrees out and I was hitting my head on the side going, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I wasn’t making very much money; not enough to make a living. Then the air conditioner was blowing on me,” Hobson said, laughing.

“I started making some phone calls and got hold of Perry (Technical Institute) and kept filling out the paperwork and doing it and doing it and going up there taking the tests and finally got in and dealt with all the financial aid, because I didn’t have anything. I got a little bit of financial aid and took out some loans and did it.”

After two years at Perry, he graduated with a degree in heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration technology. He landed a job at Metfab Heating & Air in Vancouver, Wash., but didn’t like the wet weather, so he moved after one year.

His next stop was in Kennewick, where he worked for ALL-PHASE Refrigeration and Heating. The weather was drier, but he still was not comfortable. So he made one more move and got a technician job working for Quincy Heating & Air Conditioning in 2006.

“I’m a service technician. I take care of all the broken stuff,” Hobson said. “Basically, if someone calls in and their air conditioner or heater is not working, I go to the house and fix it, repair it, just take care of it.”

His job has also made him more noticeable among the community.

“Believe it or not, most people know me by, ‘Hey, you came out and fixed my air conditioner,’ ” he said.

That is also part of the small, rural town life he grew up with as a resident of George and a 2001 graduate of Quincy High School. He was not the only Hobson to graduate that year. His twin sister, Stephanie, was also a 2001 graduate. Four years prior, his older twin brothers graduated from Quincy.

Hobson spent most of his life living with twins, but he did not carry on the tradition when he and Tina, his wife of three years, had a baby girl, Summer Grace, last year. The 10-month-old daughter is just one of a kind, according to her father.

“It wasn’t bad being a twin. The only bad thing is you don’t get your own birthday,” Hobson said. “No, it’s fine, really no different. We weren’t identical.”

The best part of having more siblings — three brothers, one sister and two half-brothers — is more family to hang out with, according to Hobson.

“Most of the time I like to just spend time with family, be at home and relaxing. I love to go up camping,” he said. “The most camping time I get is going up elk hunting. I really enjoy it. I pretty much go with my brothers and my dad and some cousins. It’s who can make it. We set up a big camp. Last year it was just me and my dad.”

All three of his brothers were in the Marines, and Hobson had eyes to enlist himself, but the twins steered him away from enlistment.

“It wasn’t for me. My oldest brother, Shawn, initially joined the Marines and said it was great and talked my other two brothers, Seth and Shane, into going,” he said.

“Come to find out he was just laughing about it the whole time. They don’t regret it at all. They’ve done more and gone to places that I will never be able to go to.”

But traveling the world does not seem to be on his list at this time. He would rather head home and hang out with his wife and play with Summer all year long.