{"id":34410,"date":"2022-12-01T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/?p=34410"},"modified":"2022-12-01T13:26:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T21:26:02","slug":"case-in-point-december-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/case-in-point-december-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Case in Point \u2013 December 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-33061\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/ted-case-1.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of Ted Case\" width=\"25%\" height=\"283\" \/>She hadn\u2019t responded to my email, which was odd because normally Erika Paleck wrote back to me within minutes. While she was a relatively new member of the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association\u2019s board\u2014where she served as the representative for West Oregon Electric Cooperative\u2014I greatly valued her perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Erika and I shared a passion for baseball, a game she couldn\u2019t get enough of. (She missed ORECA\u2019s summer meeting to attend the Major League All-Star Game, a decision I told her wasn\u2019t even a close call.)<\/p>\n<p>Weeks before our annual meeting, I\u2019d asked Erika if she would help plan the directors&#8217; roundtable. She accepted immediately, brimming with ideas. Emails flew back and forth, and I enjoyed her straight talk and self-deprecating humor.<\/p>\n<p>But on this day, there was no word from her. Then, that afternoon, I received word that Erika had tragically died hours before.<\/p>\n<p>It is hard to articulate the sense of loss for her family and the Oregon cooperative family. Her husband, Bob, is a former director at West Oregon, and Erika had quickly risen to board chair, a star on the rise.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-34411 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-400-p32-December2022_Page_1_Image_0004.jpg\" alt=\"Erika Paleck\" width=\"35%\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-400-p32-December2022_Page_1_Image_0004.jpg 957w, https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-400-p32-December2022_Page_1_Image_0004-723x800.jpg 723w, https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-400-p32-December2022_Page_1_Image_0004-307x340.jpg 307w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 957px) 100vw, 957px\" \/>Recently, I\u2019d watched her cogently explain to U.S. Representative Suzanne Bonamici why West Oregon had the highest rates in the region\u2014not an easy conversation to have. Yet, Erika was poised and articulate, and clearly had a bright future as an Oregon co-op leader.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have plans for you,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n<p>And I did, because Erika was opinionated and civic-minded, a voracious reader who was exceptionally clear-eyed about the political polarization facing our country.<\/p>\n<p>We paid tribute to Erika at ORECA\u2019s 80th annual meeting, but there is a sense that we missed out\u2014that the best was yet to come for a person who had already lived an extraordinary life but was just now making her mark with us.<\/p>\n<p>Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and our West Oregon family. Baseball&#8217;s World Series is over, the bats and mitts put away. But may we take solace in that Erika is now in a place where there are no rainouts, and the season never ends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Executive Director Ted Case<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She hadn\u2019t responded to my email, which was odd because normally Erika Paleck wrote back to me within minutes. While she was a relatively new member of the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association\u2019s board\u2014where she served as the representative for West Oregon Electric Cooperative\u2014I greatly valued her perspective. Erika and I shared a passion for [&hellip;]\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34414,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34410\/revisions\/34414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreca.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}