PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College’s nursing and medical assisting program students have been selling entries into the Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby in between classes, working, studying and taking care of their families.
While supporting the Olympic Medical Center Foundation, which hosts the annual derby, the students also are working for themselves in two ways.
All proceeds for this year’s derby will go to a medical program scholarship fund for local residents.
In addition, both the nursing program and the medical assisting program at Peninsula College will be reimbursed every penny of the student sales. Nursing students will use the money for their pinning ceremony — an invitation-only event on June 20 — with anything left over going to fees for licensing. Team Medical assisting students will use the funds for credentialing fees.
Second-year nursing student Kaylee Oldemeyer said last week that she had sold more than 600 duck tickets.
“I sold a lot this year,” said the student, who also sold for the derby last year. “This is the most I have sold.”
Ticket sales continue this week through Saturday for the Olympic Medical Center Foundation’s 36th annual Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby, presented by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.
Many medical program students are selling to local businesses or through word-of-mouth while others are joining volunteers manning tables at Swain’s General Store, the Lincoln Street and Eastside Safeway stores and Wilder Toyota in Port Angeles; the Safeway in Sequim; Sequim and Port Angeles farmers markets; and at First Fed and Sound Community Bank branches in Port Angeles and Sequim.
The giant raffle will be decided by the “duck pluck.” Thirty-six prizes will be awarded, including the top prize of a 2025 Toyota from Wilder Toyota.
Those prizes will be awarded after the main event, which is set for 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The Bub and Alice Olsen VID (Very Important Duck) event will be at 1:15 p.m.; three prizes will be awarded in that race. Festivities will start at 11:30 a.m. with the opening of the Edie Beck Kids Pavilion and the VID party at noon.
All will be in a new location this year. The duck pluck will be at the Port Angeles City Pier Stage.
Main race tickets are $7 per duck or $35 for six entries for the price of five. Each VID ticket, which is $350, buys 60 entries in the main race and one VID duck. VID ducks are larger than the main race ducks and have the names of the business or individual purchasers emblazoned upon them.
Proceeds go to the OMC Foundation Healthcare Scholarship Fund, a $500,000 scholarship program to help increase the number of healthcare workers in Clallam County.
The program pays tuition, fees and living expenses to recipients pursuing training in the medical field, most of whom attend Peninsula College, who then promise to be available to work for at least two years at Olympic Medical Center once they have their credentials.
Nurses and a variety of medical assisting students are eligible for the scholarship and are selling duck tickets.
Money from the sales go to the OMC Foundation, which writes a check for the amount that goes to the Peninsula College Foundation; the college foundation in turn reimburses expenses to the nursing and medical assisting programs, said Rachel Pairsh, director of the college’s Medical Assisting Program, and Kate Dexter, nursing program specialist.
This year’s graduating RNs have $3,031 available to them from last year’s sales for their pinning ceremony and fees for licensing, Dexter said.
“This will be the seventh ceremony — a long and very generous arrangement,” Dexter said.
Medical assisting program students will enter careers ranging from clinical medical work to records research to tech positions in phlebotomy and EKG.
“We use Duck Derby funds to reimburse students for credentialing expenses,” said Pairsh, who sells duck tickets along with her students.
Oldemeyer is among those helped by the OMC Foundation’s scholarship to fulfill her career goals. At 19, she is the youngest in the nursing program, she said, having applied to the program as soon as she graduated from Port Angeles High School.
“There are many family and friends here that I could help by being a nurse,” she said.
First-year nursing student Kayla Keller is, at 33, starting over with her degree and profession, she said, although she has always worked in the medical field.
Keller used to do clinical exercise physiology for heart and lung patients and now works at Avamere Olympic Rehabilitation of Sequim and at Olympic Medical Center.
She always wanted to be a nurse, a dream for her that she shared with the grandmother who raised her and who she cared for before her death.
“It was always in our plan,” Keller said.
“Now I finally have the stability and support to do it,” she said. “My husband (Izak Neziri) is so supportive. He told me, ‘Do whatever you need to do your dream job.’”
Another first-year nursing student who is selling ducks, Devanee Cipriano, has worked as a certified medical assistant at OMP Pediatrics for five years. At 46, the Port Angeles native is pursuing registered nursing studies at Peninsula College.
The step wouldn’t have been possible without the scholarship that the Duck Derby will help fund, Cipriano said.
A single mother, she had returned to school when her daughters were young.
“I could see how intense the nursing program was. I didn’t want to do that to my girls,” she said, so she went into the medical assisting program instead.
Her daughters have just graduated from college, and Cipriano is focusing on her studies.
She wants to continue working with children as she does at the pediatric clinic.
“You get to help a whole generation,” she said.
“I’ve seen babies be born and then get to watch them grow.”
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Leah Leach is a former executive editor for Peninsula Daily News.
