If you like remote job sites with high wages, she says, come on down. There's gold in the man camps, so head south to the future. The oil business is booming, and so is former Unalaska resident Sheila Taranto's newest taxi business, Mr Kab of North Dakota.
"This is the boomtown of America," she said in a telephone interview earlier this month, from the heart of the northern plains' shale oil industry.
In September, she said she moved to Williston, N.D., and was immediately hired as a construction flagger. A month later, she was back in her old business, and now carries passengers all over the state and Montana. Her three crew-cab pickup truck taxis are characteristic of a flamboyant business style that included a stretch limousine in Barrow and then Unalaska, and later a Hummer in Unalaska.
Oil and construction workers are flooding into the region, and packing into "man camps" of recreational vehicles and other trailers, and FEMA-style housing, instant communities where her customers live.
"We service all the man camps and small towns and local bars," said Taranto. "Everybody's driving drunk out here. The police force is not big enough to handle the influx of people."
The scene reminds her of Prudhoe Bay construction days. She sees "a lot of people from Alaska," attracted to high paying skilled and unskilled jobs. Over the holidays, she said a large influx of petroleum engineers from the North Slope surged into the area. Welders and swampers are making $3,000 to $4,000 weekly. Babysitters and roughnecks are both in demand. Fast food restaurants are paying $15 an hour, and a big box discount store pays as much as $20 an hour, she said.
"Every week I see more people from Alaska coming down," said Taranto, who employs former Unalaska resident Tony Lutz, while another Aleutians taxi veteran is on the way to western North Dakota.
Taranto moved to Unalaska from Barrow in 1995, worked for Blue Checker taxi for about seven years, then started her own business, Taxi USA, and later acquired Mr Kab. In 2011 she moved to Wasilla, following a legal battle and the revocation of her taxi business privileges.
In a couple of weeks she turns 69, she said. After leaving Unalaska two years ago, and "starting over" she took computer courses at the University of Alaska, and now has a web presence. An online photo at mrkab.biz poses her in front of the Mount Rushmore sculptures in neighboring South Dakota, demonstrating the entrepreneur's esteem for images of former presidents, from dollar bills to the Black Hills.
"Women over 65 are not too old to start over," said Taranto, although other news accounts say that some seniors are not doing very well by the oil boom in North Dakota, forced out of longtime homes by soaring rents.
In a political sentiment the Alaska Legislature might resolve to approve, Taranto said, Alaska suffers from excessive environmental regulation of the oil industry. In North Dakota she said 200 oil rigs are now operating, where the future could see an "oil rig on every acre."
The rapid rise of the American shale oil industry is leading to comparisons with Saudi Arabia's vast crude oil reserves.
North Dakota is not the only Lower 48 state with a shale oil boom, and already calls for greater environmental regulations are being heard, because of drinking water contamination and earthquakes upsetting the neighbors.
Shale oil isn't the only new energy source boosting local economies, while riling up the people who live nearby. Alternative power is feeling the heat too, with giant windmills opposed because of noise and size. Lacking the small-scale charm envisioned for a clean green energy future, the towering turbines have been tagged as "industrial wind," like the term "industrial fishery" applied to big trawlers, in contrast to the small boat salmon fleet.
In a community conflict in Hawaii, yard signs opposing a huge wind farm outnumbered supporters' placards recently. The island of Lanai, formerly a pineapple plantation, is now a luxury hotel and golf destination, and signs from the hotel workers union supported windmills.
This article was first published by Bristol Bay Times and is republished here with permission.