Spending time with the staff at BGC Williams Lake (formerly Boys and Girls Club Williams Lake), it is not unusual to hear club manager Krista Harvey thank her staff and follow with “I love you.”
The love and respect in the building feels genuine, and after six years with the organization, Harvey appears to still be loving the work and those she works with.
“I’ve met so many great youth, and unfortunately lost so many great youth,” she said, of her work as a frontline outreach worker for about 17 years.
It was this work which brought Harvey to Williams Lake for a job with Pregnancy Outreach about 12 years ago. She and her husband Jamie Harvey were looking to make a change. The couple had met in Penticton, when Krista was working in a coffee shop located behind Jamie’s parents’ grocery store, where he worked. She gathered up the courage to introduce herself and the rest is history. They had then moved around a lot as the couple owned and operated a number of grocery stores.
But they wanted to have more time with their growing family and Williams Lake was a bit of a middle ground in the province. Her dad Mike Jones and second mom Darlene Jones also live in Williams Lake.
Now, close to 30 years since they met, the couple is still together, and Jamie is a sales consultant at the Dodge dealership in town.
“We love hard,” she said, noting it can be a “roller coaster” raising a family together and going through life, but she looks happy and at ease talking about her family.
The couple has three children: Michael, Brinley, and Sutter.
“I just love being a mom,” she said, noting this is despite her mom trying to dissuade her from motherhood by having her be present when her younger brother was born in 1995 and Krista was 14 at the time.
She was also present at her sister’s birth in 1998. Both experiences actually gave Harvey a fascination with birth and delivery and she initially was inspired to become a labour and delivery nurse or a midwife, but she never ended up having the money for the education and training.
Instead she became a doula.
“Women deserve these amazing births,” she said.
Then, when the couple was living in Sicamous, she joined their rescue team, and she became focused on emergency services.
Harvey said she enjoys the adrenaline rush of the role and more than anything, she just wants to be able to be there for people in a time of need.
She kept up with the rescue work when they relocated to the Cariboo and is now assistant chief of the auto-extrication team for the Central Cariboo Search and Rescue.
But her day job as the manager of BGC Williams Lake is her primary focus. She had worked with the organization when she was doing pregnancy outreach, and said the vibe always appealed to her.
“Everyone always looked like they had so much fun all the time,” she said. So when a job opened up, she went for it, and has moved up to the role she now holds.
Though it is challenging, she loves being able to make a difference and credits her great team with making her feel supported.
“My self care is helping other people, I feel better knowing that I’ve helped someone.”
Managing the agency, having three children and her current job leave little time free for other activities, but in her spare time, she said she loves having campfires with her family, though this can be challenging in our region.
“My best memories are campfires with my family,” she said.
It is nearly the six year anniversary of her coming to work for BGC Williams Lake, something she can mark each year with the return of their annual haunted house. The community favourite returns on Oct. 27 and 28 this year, with the theme of Haunted Throw-Back, drawing on classic horror films for inspiration.
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