12 Header The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 3 Member Spotlight By Vanessa Salvia Lance King is 48 years old and grew up in the same area where he now works, Ontario, Oregon. He’s built a life with his “understanding, very supporting, survey-helping, wonderful wife,” Cindy, over the past 28 years. He started his career in 1993, just one year out of high school, with JUB Engineers in Boise Idaho. He worked at JUB for three years, working on a three-man crew for the first two years. “Learning from the bottom up,” he says. “By year three I made party chief and started to realize I really liked surveying.” Lance’s father had a couple buddies who were surveyors, and they said they were looking for someone. Those friends actually hired Lance’s brother Clint, who is older by a year. “Then they said, ‘If we need another guy, we’ll hire Lance.’ But Clint nearly cut his thumb off at a sawmill right before starting the job, and couldn’t take the job on account of being almost minus a thumb. So they said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll take the other one,’ which was me.” He says he knew within a year that he liked surveying and wanted to stick with it. Today, Lance is licensed in Oregon and Idaho but has also worked in Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington. He splits his time between the Ontario and Hermiston offices, which keeps him busy with work primarily in the Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho areas. “Surveying is unique in that you get to see a lot of different counties and project types,” he says. “I do spend more time in the office these days, I do make it out to all the boundary survey projects.” In 1996, Lance started working for Gaschler & Cummings in Ontario. “I was lucky to have Dan Cummings as my mentor,” Lance says. “Most of my work at JUB was construction surveying and support of engineering projects, but Dan really introduced me to boundary surveying and my interest for it took off.” In 2002, Lance teamed up with his other brother, Chase, and Randy Scott and formed K-3 Service Inc. That team mostly worked on construction surveying and GIS data collection, and got their start from a large GIS project in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Air Force. Three years later, he returned to his mentor Dan, then at Edwards and Cummings. Chase and Lance merged K-3 with Edwards and Cummings and became CK3, LLC. “I run the day-to-day operations,” Lance says. “We specialize in civil, structural engineering, surveying, and planning. The base company was founded in 1972 by Albert Gaschler, and CK3 celebrated 50 years in business this last fall of 2022.” Lance’s children, son Kyle and daughter Hailey, both also got into surveying, making it a family activity. Although they both have gone on to other careers, they did spend a lot of time helping their dad out and worked in the field for a while. “I think kids always want to go to work with their parents and surveying is one of those jobs where you’re able to do that,” Lance says. “You can always drag your kids into the field.” Kyle is now a diesel mechanic after serving in the Army, and Hailey is in finance. Lance King, PLS CK3, LLC www.CK3LLC.net Lance on the cover of Professional Surveyor Magazine in July 2009, riding one of his horses on a survey for EP Minerals in the Juntura, Oregon area. Monument rehabilitation at Succor Creek for Oregon State Parks and Recreation involved finding and updating the original survey corners that were set by the GLO in 1899.
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