{"id":639,"date":"2015-03-15T18:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T18:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/?page_id=639"},"modified":"2015-03-15T19:29:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T19:29:54","slug":"from-temp-worker-to-auditor-dolores-gilmore-worked-her-way-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/from-temp-worker-to-auditor-dolores-gilmore-worked-her-way-to-the-top\/","title":{"rendered":"From temp worker to auditor, Dolores Gilmore worked her way to the top"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New<\/a>

New Kitsap County Auditor Dolores Gilmore started at the auditor\u2019s office 30 years ago in a temporary job through a welfare work program. (LARRY STEAGALL \/ KITSAP SUN)<\/p><\/div>\n

Published online: Saturday,\u00a0Jan. 3, 2015<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 Print:\u00a0Sunday,\u00a0<\/strong>Jan. 4, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

PORT ORCHARD \u2014 Dolores Gilmore bought a typing book for a quarter at a yard sale not long after she moved to Kitsap County with her two children in 1984.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got here and I thought, \u2018I need to learn to type.\u2019 I never took typing in high school,\u201d said Gilmore, who graduated high school in 1972 and never earned a college degree.<\/p>\n

As a divorced, single mother, she took a temporary job in a welfare work program with the Kitsap County Auditor\u2019s Office and taught herself to type.<\/p>\n

Thirty years later, she was elected auditor.<\/p>\n

Gilmore defeated Republican Kelly Emerson in the November election to replace retiring Auditor Walt Washington, walking away with nearly 53 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

Gilmore has worked in all four divisions of the auditor\u2019s office \u2014 elections, licensing, records and financial services \u2014 and spent the last 20 years in the elections division, most recently serving as elections manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer story is not like any other,\u201d Washington said.<\/p>\n

She never envisioned running for office when she took the temporary job with the county.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just like everybody else,\u201d she said. \u201cI was just trying to get the bills paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

She needed a job close to the house she was renting with her 7-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son, because her car wasn\u2019t always reliable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I could ride my bike or walk and still get to work, even if the car didn\u2019t start,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The job was part of a welfare work program Gilmore joined. She had three options \u2014 the auditor\u2019s office, the school district or the hospital. The auditor\u2019s office was her final choice because it was the closest to her house.<\/p>\n

After spending time overseas and in Florida with her now ex-husband, who was in the Navy, Gilmore had made her way back to Washington in 1983, following the divorce. There were few jobs in her hometown near Vancouver, Washington, and she had two young children to support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had just closed down the Alcoa aluminum plant. There were a lot of plants that closed down,\u201d Gilmore said.<\/p>\n

One of her brothers in Tacoma urged her to come up north.<\/p>\n

When the temp job with the auditor\u2019s office ended following the 1984 presidential election, a part-time job opened up in the office\u2019s licensing division. Gilmore got the job and was able to pick up extra hours helping in the elections division.<\/p>\n

At that point, working for the county wasn\u2019t just a job. She enjoyed it, she said. She even described it as fun.<\/p>\n

She worked in licensing for about a year before getting a full-time job in the recording division in 1986, where she worked for several years before she became supervisor of that division.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough all of this, there is one thing that\u2019s really great to be said about Kitsap County, it\u2019s that if a person really applies themselves there are so many training opportunities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She took advantage of all the training she could and even bettered herself by participating in 4 1\/2 years of Toastmasters to improve her public speaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a dedication to getting the job done and doing it the best you can every day. That\u2019s just who she is,\u201d Washington said. \u201cShe was pretty shy when I first got there, and I pushed her to go to the commissioner chambers and present her own budget. Once she got comfortable speaking in public, meeting people and giving presentations she got really involved. She has grown a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

EARLY YEARS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gilmore grew up on a farm as the eighth child of 12 in Battle Ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my family, when you turned 16 you got a job and started paying rent. That\u2019s just the way it was,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She had a job in a nursing home and later another selling cowboy hats and saddles. But even when she got her first formal jobs, work wasn\u2019t new to Gilmore.<\/p>\n

At 7 she would get up and ride the \u201cberry bus\u201d to pick strawberries and blackberries in her uncle\u2019s fields. She started cooking family meals when she was 13.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of cooking is groceries and planning, figuring out what you are going to serve,\u201d Gilmore said. \u201cWell, there was a lot of people in house, with my sister and her husband at the time, and mom and dad, there was about 13 or 14 people. So, when you made a mistake it was a big mistake. When you made pudding and burned it, it was like a gallon of milk. There was a learning curve to that, but I liked it because I could cook whatever I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her childhood on the farm prepared her for time in Scotland, where she gave birth to both her kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lived in this little cottage up with the sheep,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While it sounds romantic, it really wasn\u2019t, Gilmore said.<\/p>\n

Her husband stayed on base and she stayed in the cottage with the kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be up there, there\u2019s no phone, there was nothing. Your heat was coal or paraffin heaters. There was electricity, but it was a shilling meter, so you would put in coins and if you ran out of coins the electricity went off and that was it. They\u2019d come around and empty (the meter) and you\u2019d have to have enough money to buy back the coins,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was pretty rustic, but I was raised on a farm, so I adjusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

CREATIVE SIDE<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Gilmore is often described as a hard worker and an analytical thinker, she also has a creative streak.<\/p>\n

She writes poetry and has an impressive green thumb.<\/p>\n

Kitsap County chief deputy auditor Winnie Flores-Logan describes Gilmore as being both left- and right-brained. Analytical people are often described as left-brained and artistic people as right-brained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anybody quite like her,\u201d Flores-Logan said. \u201cIt\u2019s more than a garden, it\u2019s a farm. She grows everything and there was a time she had her own livestock.\u201d<\/p>\n

The garden is at her home that she and her husband, David Gilmore, built together. They will celebrate their 30-year anniversary in May.<\/p>\n

Gilmore\u2019s creative side also has helped her come up with several improvements in the auditor\u2019s office during her 30 years there.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo often in government things change and people add a layer, add a layer, add a layer and pretty soon it\u2019s crazy. When a new thing comes in you look at it to see how can we fix it without adding another layer on,\u201d she said. \u201cYou change it, you don\u2019t add to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

During her time in the auditor\u2019s office, the county has been at the forefront of providing military, overseas and disabled voters access to ballots.<\/p>\n

The county was not only the first in the state to implement online ballot access for military voters, it went beyond basic state requirements, winning a national award.<\/p>\n

The county could meet requirements for military voter access by attaching a PDF to an email. Overseas military voters can\u2019t always open a PDF and don\u2019t always have access to a printer, Gilmore said, so the county provides online ballot access through its website.<\/p>\n

Gilmore has helped lead several improvements in the auditor\u2019s office, and most of the changes were her ideas, said Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was never satisfied with just staying where I was at,\u201d Gilmore said. \u201cI would look and say, \u2018OK, I can improve here. How can I improve?\u2019 I\u2019d look at different areas of a job to see what can get better. And that\u2019s the part I have always really enjoyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Gilmore never planned on climbing the ranks in the auditor\u2019s office, she had ideas and wanted to make changes that weren\u2019t always easy or possible to initiate at the lower ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was always the pull for me,\u201d she said. \u201cTo make it better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published online: Saturday,\u00a0Jan. 3, 2015\u00a0 \u00a0 Print:\u00a0Sunday,\u00a0Jan. 4, 2015 PORT ORCHARD \u2014 Dolores Gilmore bought a typing book for a quarter at a yard sale not long after she moved to Kitsap County with her two children in 1984. \u201cI got here and I thought, \u2018I need to learn to type.\u2019 I never took typing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-639","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/639\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelanneseymour.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}