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Female High School Mechanic Picked to Work on Cars
Take one look across the automotive bay at Hometowne Auto and Tire and you’ll notice something unusual.
No, it’s not unusual because there’s a female working in the shop, finding a woman working in an auto shop is more common that it used to be. It’s because this female, Katie Tatum, 17, is one of the top automotive students at C.D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge. And, unlike others her working jobs at retail stores or a fast food shop, Katie is getting paid to work under the hood.
Three days a week, Tatum can be found working alongside the other mechanics at Hometowne Auto and Tire on U.S. 1 in Woodbridge. Working on autos is something that comes natural to Tatum. In kindergarten, you could find her in the garage handing her father tools while he was changing the oil on their family cars.
As time progressed, the two continue to work on cars together. “We have a jeep that we tinker on together. We used to have a Land Cruiser but we had to sell that because it was eating up our money by a lot. It is in Utah now,” said Tatum.
Tatum has excelled in sports and rowed for both the boys and girls crew team at Woodbridge Senior High School. After transferring to Hylton last year, which has a specialized automotive program, that’s when the opportunity of being an auto mechanic took center stage.
When it comes to sheer size, Katie is smaller that the other guys that surround her in the shop. And that’s OK, because she’s already shown that she can hold her own on the floor.
“Some people come in and think the job is going to be easy,” said Ray Dezeeu, who is training Katie. He also is relatively new to the automotive field after graduating from a 2-year apprenticeship at Germanna Community College in Fredericksburg, under the guidance of ST Billingsley, owner of Hometowne Auto Repair and Tire. Dezeeu says Katie has the right attitude and drive to fit in well.
“Because she is smaller and weighs less than the other guys, her weight makes a difference because sometimes you have to putt your weight and strength into breaking bolts…but we’ve all accepted her and its kind of alike a big family.”
Being accepted and working at an automotive shop while still in high school is not something that came easy for her. Before being hired at Hometowne, Katie interviewed with three other shops. Those meetings were arranged by her high school automotive teacher who said Tatum is one of the most talented students in his class.
“No one was giving her a shot,” said C.D. Hylton High School automotive teacher Eddie Stevens. “I know her personality and worked with her for over a year, and I kinda had the feeling she was a bad interviewer, but I didn’t want to think that was the case.”
Stevens doesn’t send every student of his out to interview at shops. It’s mainly the high school students with a keen interest in the learning more about the business, and that’s worked out to be about three to five students over a 3-year time span.
It’s Katie’s senior year of high school and when she graduates she hopes to go onto Ohio Technical College in Cleveland. The two-year program will give her even more training in the field, and she’ll graduate with a degree after two years of work.
At Hometowne, being the youngest person in the shop, not to mention the only female, doesn’t faze her.
“There’s always going to be someone better than you,” said Tatum. “I try not to compare myself to other people unless they’re competition, but compare yourself to how you were in the past and try to better yourself.”
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