Reggie Thompson is discovering a new Reggie Thompson. For years, too many too-long days aboard an Alaskan fishing boat stifled his creative side and artistic ambitions. The physical -- and sometimes deadly -- work kept him moving 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
Since the day he had first arrived in Alaska, Reggie had imagined he would be fishing for the rest of his life. But an injury to his wrist had cut short his life at sea. He returned briefly to previous work in telemarketing management in Anchorage, but the job then ended and Reggie moved on.
And so it was with an injured wrist, no job and two aging parents back home in Virginia that Reggie picked up and moved to Seattle in 1997. Then, two and a half years ago, he found himself at the Real Change office.
"You got to work your own hours, be your own boss," he says of the career change. "After all those years on the boat, that sounded really good to me."
He regularly sells more than 300 papers each month in front of the Specialty's Caf