Fifteen years ago Shawn Dom spent a semester while still in high school working at Rockland Manufacturing west of Bedford. A Hyndman native, Shawn graduated later that year from Hyndman High School and the Bedford County Technical Center's metal fabrication program. He was placed at Rockland through the Center's cooperative education program, which allows students to work in their field of study to gain hands-on experience.

He did such a good job as a student that he was hired full-time at Rockland when he graduated. "I started out cleaning the machine shop, then began running the drill press, then a lathe," he says. "I was trained on all the machines in the machine shop and learned to run the CNC (computer controlled) lathes." Rockland manufactures equipment such as blades and other attachments for loaders, dozers, motor graders and excavators.

Shawn's job is to make parts such as cylinders using one of the 10 machines in the machine shop. "It's a challenge," he says. "We take a chunk of metal, a blue print and make something. It's pretty neat." Shawn says he likes coming to work because of that challenge and because of the atmosphere at the plant. "We all work together and we're treated fairly," he says. "It's a great place to work." He has the night shift, which he requested a few years ago so he could spend some of the daytime hours building a house. "I like it," he says. "It's a lot of responsibility because we're more on our own at night, but I enjoy it." He would recommend his career to others, but cautions, "you've got to have good math skills, enjoy working with your hands, be a problem solver and be able to follow blue prints and like paying attention to details. "The things that I make must fit within very tight tolerances, there's no margin for error, so you've got to like the challenge of being exact."

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