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Show 4 UBATC grad finds success road Tricia Abegglen is a successful success-ful entrepreneur with her own home-based business, Custom Mapping Service, but a few years ago a chronic illness came close to disabling her completely. After earning a bachelor's degree de-gree in geography from Brigham Young University in 2000, Abegglen Abeg-glen became ill and returned home to Vernal. "I developed chronic bursitis and fibromyalgia so bad that I couldn't even stand up," she said. "So I moved home with Mom so she could help take care of me." The illnesses forced Abegglen Abeg-glen to reconsider her career choices and led her to the Uintah Basin Applied Technology College. Col-lege. Over a 20-month period she completed a certificate in computer-aided drafting, which proved to be a turning point in her professional life and served as a spring board to her now booming business. "I picked the draftingprogram because you can do that sitting down," she said. "I never could have done it if the classes hadn't been open-entry, open-exit. It was good that they let me come and go as I pleased because I couldn't have gone (to school) full-time. I Award-winning author visits Vernal By Tabatha Deans Express Writer "Anybody can write a book. You don't even need to know how to spell if you have a word processor," says award-winning author Mackey "Mack" Hedges who was in town Dec. 23 for a book signing for the re-release of , his book "The Last Buckaroo." Hedges was visiting his son Jed and his family for the holidays holi-days and combined the visit with the book signing. "The Last Buckaroo" was the winner of the National Cowboy Symposium Working Cowboy Award and the Mormon Letter Fiction Award. Hedges shies away from the fame that comes with being an award-winning author and says luck and circumstance had more to do with his success than talent. tal-ent. " I don't know anything about writing a book," he says. "I couldn't even write my name." .,. I lodges' story, began inuthe spring of '1990', 1 when, lie' 'says, . he got "busted up" while riding a horse named Pegasus. After being bucked, then dragged by the horse for several hundred feet, he rode back to the ranch and continued herding cows until the evening. His wife, Candace, took him to the doctor, and after receiving X-rays, Hedges discovered discov-ered his pelvis was broken. "When I told the doctor that I rode home with a broken pel Conservation groups sue to stop Utah drilling lease sales By Matthew Daly Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Conservation Con-servation groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the Bush administration's last-minute sale of oil-and-gas drilling leases in Utah on spectacular scenery near national parks and ancient rock art panels. The Bureau of Land Management Manage-ment had scheduled an auction for Dec. 19 to sell drilling leases coveringmore than 100,000 acres of wild land in eastern Utah. Actor Robert Redford, a longtime environmental activist, called the lease sale "morally criminal." Redford, who owns a home in Utah and hosts the annual Sundance Film Festival there, said the leasing issue is emotional for him, since he has spent much of his adult life in southern Utah, on foot and horseback. "These lands do not belong to Bush and Cheney. It's our land - public lands - and the BLM is supposed to be protecting lands on our behalf," Redford said via satellite from LosAngelesduring a news conference in Washington. Washing-ton. President Bush "may be a lame duck," Redford added, "but he can still quack. I say: Stop it. Enough is enough." Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney at-torney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Bush ; administration was rushing to ' approve the leases before leaving office next month. "In their midnight maneuvering, maneuver-ing, BLM failed to complete the analysis required by federal law ' for the protection of America's natural and cultural treasures," ; she said. ! A spokeswoman for the BLM : declined to comment. Buccino and other speakers said the land being considered ! for drilling is some of the most i spectacular scenery in the coun just couldn't have done it." Abegglen's freelance cartography cartog-raphy work allows her to keep her own hours and be her own boss, which is important when managing the pain that plagues her on a daily basis. She now contracts with energy en-ergy industry companies, creating creat-ing two-dimensional road mans that she updates daily. The maps show new oilfield roads that seem to spring up overnight, twisting their ways through Carbon, Duchesne, and Uintah counties. "If you're not familiar with the roads it can be really difficult to get around," Abegglen said. "There's nothing out there, and there's 500 miles of new roads being built a month, I'm guessing." guess-ing." Companies in the energy industry in-dustry value her custom maps, complete with latitude and longitude lon-gitude coordinates, because they are an invaluable resource for workers trying to find a specific location. "Most oilfield roads don't even have a name. If you've ever been out there, it's a maze," Abegglen said. "One crew getting lost for just one hour costs thousands of dollars. Thousands." vis, he didn't believe me," says Hedges. He spent the next two months in a body cast, waiting for his wounds to heal. "Within two days we were out of the house," says Jed. "He was driving us all crazy." Hedge's wife, Candace, a writer, was concerned about her husband being depressed and was anxious to find something for him to do. She brought him a computer and instructed him to write some "little stories for the children" while he was recuperating. recu-perating. "I wrote a few stories, and then I thought, 'they won't want to read this,'" says Hedges. "So I added a little fiction and excitement excite-ment to the stories." Hedges says his stories are based on real-life experiences. "I can only write about what I've seen, or what I've done," he says. "If the character is tall in real life, I make him short in the story. If he's a little nlan in T,:real life; Ttoake him big in the -istory.p " ;- - ;: After finishing a manuscript, Hedges began distributing it to people he knew. He received rave reviews from those who read it but says he didn't feel his work was print worthy. His work became be-came increasingly popular, and Hedges recalls the first time someone called, interested in getting more copies. "She called and asked for 17 copies," he recalls. "I told her to try, including land near Nine Mile Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, and Arches and Canyonlands national parks. The BLM has dropped more than half the parcels it originally proposed to lease, after the sales were criticized because of their proximity to national parks and ancient rock art panels. The National Na-tional Park Service was among those that objected to the original plan. The BLM's final list for the Dec. 19 sale included 132 parcels totaling about 164,000 acres. A Park Service spokesman said the final list reflects an agreement between the two agencies - both of which are part of the Interior Department. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., called the lease sale "an early Christmas present to the oil and gas industry from a lame duck administration with one foot already out the door." "Once these pristine wilderness wilder-ness lands are destroyed we can never get them back," he said. Baird said he was not impressed im-pressed that officials had scaled back the original plan to lease about 360,000 acres of public land for oil and gas development. "It's a little bit like someone telling you they're going to rob only part of your house," Baird said. "It is a final insult from an administration that has done so t" f0 F.isl i I Vernal On-site oilfield workers take Abegglen's GPS units with them to well locations to gather information infor-mation and collect road files. She then converts that information into usable maps her customers can count on to get them where they need to be. She is also adept at drawing three-dimensional computer models of oil and gas separating stations and hook-ups for oil valves. Abegglen credits her instructor instruc-tor at UBATC, Bob Naylor, for teaching her everything she needed to know about drafting to succeed in her business. "I learned all my stuff from Bob," she said. "I learned how to draw in 3-D. Bob taught us how, and I use it every single day." Abegglen is now anticipating expanding her business into a professional plaza in Vernal and hiring an employee to help take orders and distribute maps. She admits that she never anticipated creating such a successful career from her architectural and mechanical me-chanical drafting skills and is pleasantly surprised at how well it has taken off. "I'm so busy I can barely stand it, but I like it that way. It's really a lot of fun." just print them off, and she asked 'what about the copyright?' I said, 'what's a copyright?'" Even though established author Baxter Black reviewed his manuscript and penned a personal letter of recommendation recommenda-tion to a publisher, Hedges did nothing with the manuscript for five years. When he finally decided to submit it to a publisher in Utah, along with the letter of recommendation, recom-mendation, he says he was in the right place at the right time. "I have to say it was more luck than talent," says Hedges. "Everything that followed was like pulling the handle of a slot machine and winning four or five times in a row." Hedges, whose second book is due out in 2009, says he still has a hard time considering himself a writer. "I still don't know anything about writing a book," he says. "Everything you learn in a class about English and grammar, is trumped by my writing." He does believe, however, that anyone interested in writing should give it a shot, and offers these two bits of advice: "Write about what you know about, so people who read it don't think you're trying to sell them a bill of goods," he says. "And be passionate about what you write." tdeans vernal.com much to destroy this country." Baird said he was confident the Obama administration would reverse the sales, but he said that was not guaranteed and should not be necessary. A spokesman for Presidentelect President-elect Obama declined immediate comment. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, named Wednesday as Obama's choice for Interior secretary, has not spoken publicly about the Utah lease plan. In his four years in the Senate, Salazar has been a champion for "responsible" energy production on public lands - opposing efforts by the Bush administration to develop oil shale resources in the West and to open up Alaska's Arctic Arc-tic National Wildlife Refuge, but helping to bro' a deal allowing more offshore production. Salazar has also been a vocal advocate of renewable energy, and the public lands he will oversee over-see include some of the nation's largest sources of wind, solar and geothermal energy. Redford, who has worked with Salazar on environmental issues, called his nomination encouraging and said Salazar has sent signals he opposes drilling on sensitive lands. "IIedidn'tfarmoilrigs,"Red-ford "IIedidn'tfarmoilrigs,"Red-ford said, referring to Salazar's past as a rancher in Colorado. Something to tilt ciloul... xpress 100 North VVrn.il, LlUih 1-1078 435-789-3511 MHW.wri.i.rom Express Illness forced Tricia Abegglen to re-evaluate herfuture.Aftertaking courses at Uintah Basin Applied Technology College, Abegglen now owns a custom mapping business that she operates out of her home. (Patrick Timothy MullikinVernal Express) . "t Buckaroo Mackey "Mack" Hedges, author of "The Last Buckaroo," which received the National Cowboy Symposium Working Cowboy Award, advises other writers to "write about what you know and what you're passionate about." (Gary ParkerVernal Express) t - f: 1 r P, i is.- i t-s. t"1 Wednesday, 7i 4 -v 7 ' 4 . 1 - J ' ? '-i f . .. - V 0. i V -J Vi ' ,4 r At ' ' ' . t . , .... - ' ' r s " . . i. WTOlUJ.UdWMi ilr-- m 'Jill J t December 24, 2008 A5 Basin authorities urge drivers to use caution The Utah Highway Patrol and the Uintah County Sheriffs Department are asking drivers to be aware and drive safe as they travel area roads. According to data collected from Central Dispatch, there were 1 1 crashes handled by UHP - two of which caused injuries to a passenger in the vehicles - during the first big snowstorm this year. And Uintah County sheriffs deputies were called to 19 crashes in the past week. "Fortunately, most of the accidents acci-dents have been relatively minor and no one has been injured," said sheriffs Cpl. Brian Fletcher. "However, deputies realize that with the number of accidents that are occurring, injury accidents will increase." The weather, and drivers taking unnecessary risks, have been common factors in most of the crashes. Troopers are reminding drivers that with the increase in snowy weather there will be many more deer and elk crossing the roads. And with the more cold weather, there will be slicker roads. Both agencies are asking drivers to slow down, buckle up, and travel at a safe speed when the roads are covered with snow or ice. 1 4 , . ,iV - i .-.' -!" VV-'' i i |