Decorated Coast Guard pilot now COCC prof

Karl Baldessari's job assignments with the Coast Guard routinely placed him in perilous situations, often performing dramatic helicopter rescues at sea. The work also required his family to live an unsettled lifestyle for nearly three decades.

But after closing out his distinguished career with a tour as the Chief of Operations for the Northwest, Baldessari retired from the military, landing on solid ground: the Sisters resident is now settling into a new full-time position as instructor for Central Oregon Community College's growing aviation program.

The opportunity first presented itself last year as a part-time experiment while Baldessari worked as general manager for Epic Air in Bend; he found it to be a natural fit with his military background.

"All of those years, there was always a relationship working with an individual," he says. "There's been an element of education in everything I've done and I see this as an extension of that."

Baldessari's COCC students vary from recent high school graduates to returning military seeking additional career training, but they all have one thing in common: they're anxious to work in the aviation industry.

And that's something Baldessari can relate to. His desire to fly followed four years in the Coast Guard Academy and a two-year stint on a cutter based in New York City. The East Coast native opted for flight school after getting a taste of life at sea.

"Flying was more appealing than being on a ship for my whole career," says Baldessari. "It seemed like a more exciting fit for me."

In 1984, along with his new bride, Michelle, he moved to Florida for flight school then took his first commission as a duty-standing pilot in Clearwater.

In addition to search and rescue missions, Karl carried out numerous maritime drug enforcement operations in the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Central America. Chasing down smugglers was all in a day's work.

When, in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean just seconds after lift-off, Baldessari's unit was first on the scene, recovering pieces of the doomed spacecraft.

The Baldessaris next moved to the San Francisco area in 1990, where Karl's station saw up to 400 search and rescue cases a year.

Meanwhile he and Michelle became first-time parents while living in an old lighthouse keeper's house on Yerba Buena Island. Surrounded by fog and feeling isolated, Michelle felt the challenges of their lifestyle there. As a remedy, she became an active leader in La Leche League, supporting other new moms.

But the hardest phase came next. Karl's next commission took the family to the East Coast where, as helicopter program manager at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington D.C. he developed policies and procedures for both aircraft and personnel and spent a week at a time flying to units around the country. For three of their four years there, he also went to Command Staff School at night, taking on graduate-level studies, while Michelle faced the stress of managing two youngsters plus a new baby on her own.

"That was the low point for me," she recalls.

One of the benefits of his traveling, Karl says, "is you can gain an appreciation for some of the places you'd like to go."

He scoped out his ideal commission: Sitka, Alaska, where the family spent the next five years.

Positions in Alaska are heavily coveted, says Karl, and they're "challenging, exciting, sometimes high-risk."

There he worked his way up to operations officer, the senior pilot in charge of all pilots, training and operations.

His most dramatic operation there involved a three-helicopter crash. A first helicopter, carrying six tourists, crashed on a glacier near Juneau, stranding them on top of an ice field in poor visibility. Conditions were so treacherous that two more helicopters sent out by the same company crashed as well. Karl's unit, working with mountain rescue teams, was able to evacuate the tourists.

Leaving their small community in Sitka for his next commission as an executive officer in Astoria was a hard one on the family. Says Karl, "It was getting increasingly difficult because the kids were developing their relationships. It was clearly impacting the kids."

Though his duties were mainly administrative, he kept his hand in flying and happened to be piloting when two sailors, caught in a storm off the coast, required a daring rescue which earned his unit the Navy League's "Air Crew of the Year" award for the Pacific Northwest region. His rookie rescue swimmer rode 40- foot swells against 60-mile-an-hour winds for an hour before making the save. That turned out to be the last hands-on rescue operation of Karl's career.

In 2005 the family faced a tough decision. Karl's final tour of duty, which would ultimately become the chief of operations position for the Northwest, required him to live in Seattle.

The family could follow him there or accelerate their plans to build a home on a lot purchased in Sisters, stay put for good and wait for him.

"The kids made the decision that this was going to be the place," says Karl, who committed to Michelle that he would be home in time for Tyler's adolescence.

"It was like being a single mom for two years," says Michelle. "I learned to do a lot of things by myself."

Karl retired and joined the family in Sisters in 2007. He took a job as production manager for Columbia Aircraft in Bend, which went bankrupt two months later. When Cessna bought them out and kept him on, he thought he'd secured a permanent position. Cessna, too, ran square into the economic downturn, closing the Bend manufacturing plant. Karl declined a permanent position with Cessna in Kansas; the family's moving days are over.

Balancing work with family time is priority-one for Karl, and the COCC position offers a welcome sense of normalcy as well as job satisfaction.

"I feel like I am actually providing a service, communicating my experiences into their education," he says.

"The ideal next step," says Karl, would be to get on with Leading Edge helicopter flight training at the Bend Airport, giving his students their hands-on flight experience, and allowing him to spend time in the air himself.

COCC's Aviation program was founded by another Sisters resident, John Miller. Miller directs the program, which now trains 200 students at a time. Baldessari is impressed with the job potential for those who complete the program.

"Graduates are getting jobs flying," he says.

Karl feels he picked the ideal community to settle in for good. Sisters Country offers all his favorite activities: hiking, biking, skiing and training for a few triathlons each year.

"I do pretty much everything outside of golf," he says.

Michelle's a familiar face behind the counter at Sisters Athletic Club and she couldn't be happier. "This is the most stable we've felt in years," she says, noting that their family is approaching the six-year mark in Sisters. That's the longest she and Karl have lived in one place in their 28 years of marriage.

Their daughter Brittany is a senior at Portland State University; Sons Tyler and Ian attend Sisters High School.