CEO: Valerie Solorzano
Chick Of All Trades demonstrates that good ideas can go a long way
CEO Valerie Solorzano
Portland, OR — At the age of 17 Valerie Solorzano struck out on her own, 600 miles from her parents. Landing at the Portland YWCA, she soon found a job with a fast food burger chain and rented a budget apartment.
With her independent streak, Solorzano again struck out on her own, forming a small “honey-do list” company. Willing to take on any home remodeling job large or small, she named her business Chick Of All Trades (C.O.A.T.). Her snappy logo shows a woman with a carpenter’s hat and belt, with a paint roller in her right hand and a hammer in her left. She produced what her logo promised.
In 2007 a friend from her softball team alerted her to an opportunity when Portland began converting two downtown streets into bus and tram operations. With the street getting ripped up, contractors needed flaggers to supervise the automobile and pedestrian traffic.
This launched a sister company, C.O.A.T. Flagging.
“I learned everything about traffic control,” Solorzano recalls. “It’s more mental than you think.”
With heavy equipment moving around, flaggers have to be aware of both car and foot traffic. “You have to be (mentally) in the game,” the former softball coach says. “It’s very dangerous.”
From this start, Solorzano built her company to an operation with 15 core employees, surging to temporary contracts providing jobs for as many as 60.
The company has an office, advanced computer systems, and a parking lot on S.E. Milwaukie, home to a small fleet of pickup trucks bearing C.O.A.T. license plates.
Inspiration from Dad
A truck from COAT's fleet
Solorzano attributes her self-assurance to her father. At his job with the Bay Area Rapid Transportation — BART — in the San Francisco area, her father became active in unions. He took her to César Chávez rallies. She recalls Chávez calling for fair treatment for all workers and equality for women.
Clearly Chávez’ idealism inspired her.
As politically aware as she was, Solorzano rejected her father’s advice on one issue. “He would get upset with me because I wouldn’t use my minority status,” Solorzano says of her prior life in the corporate world.
Perhaps her accomplishments in the button-down world gave her self-confidence when she found an opportunity to launch her own enterprise.
Solorzano’s intelligence and skills were quickly recognized. The walls at Chick Of All Trades carry a half dozen awards from the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Portland Business Journal and the Daily Journal of Commerce citing Chick Of All Trades as an outstanding minority business.
One might think that all Solorzano would have to do to set up a flagging job would be to get a half dozen people in a pickup truck with flags and drive them to the work site.
It doesn’t work quite that simply. It starts with Irie Searcy drawing a traffic control map of the construction area on her computer. Searcy, with a degree in architecture from the University of Oregon, then marks the nearby buildings as well as the construction site. Then she plots where to place the traffic control supplies and where the flaggers need to stand.
Then, Searcy says, “I talk to customers and walk them through the whole procedure.”
The next step is to get the necessary permit from the city — including noise permits when needed. With the traffic lights off, then C.O.A.T. Flagging can position its flaggers.
Another technical service Solorzano provides is an energy audit, which tests a building’s energy efficiency. The results of this test can save a business or a homeowner serious money in energy costs.
C.O.A.T.’s reconstruction services include essentially all possible operations. “We have remodeled homes from the foundation up to the roof,” Solorzano says.
“We, as a group, are about safety,” Solorzano says. “We want to see our people go home safe.”
To contact Chick of All Trades, call (503) 467-6386 or e-mail: info@chickofalltrades.com