Business/Economy

Is this man turning Nome into rural Alaska's financial capital?

NOME — The only ATM in Nuiqsut is jammed and Lahka Peacock is trying to troubleshoot by phone with his agent in the village, which is 550 miles away across the Brooks Range. Turn it off and then back on, he suggests, then put into the reject bin any bills that have been dispensed.

He waits for the agent to power cycle the machine (it works) while ignoring the chirp of another phone and doing an interview with a visiting reporter and photographer.

It's a sunny Monday in late August. He has to order more cash for ATMs in other villages. He's also a process server and has documents to serve. He has a doctor's appointment and a school orientation for his son. One of his three employees just called in sick. The second is just starting today. The third is leaving soon for another job.

In small communities in Alaska and elsewhere, energetic and entrepreneurial people often control an array of different, sometimes disparate, businesses.

Peacock runs four. From his two-room office in a building on Nome's Front Street, he juggles his roles as ATM owner and operator, debt collector, process server and a provider of debit cards for people without bank accounts.

A poster from 1930s New York City, "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," hangs on the wall behind his head. To him, the scene of 11 construction workers perched on a girder above Manhattan represents the risks he has taken in building his businesses.

As the boss of this miniature conglomerate, he aims for an office culture that is deliberately proto-corporate, an homage to the startup sensibilities of Silicon Valley. Pushup bars, a Nerf basketball and hoop are office fixtures. Emulating late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, he sometimes does walking meetings to the store, up Anvil Mountain or to the Bering Sea beachfront. He throws beer and wine parties on Fridays. His employees are free to wear shorts and flip-flops.

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"We joke around that we're the Google and Facebook of Nome because we like to have a good time. We're creating this little environment where we kind of try to make it fun."

And he dresses the part, too, favoring the fashionless fashion of a tech CEO: a black Nike hoodie over a black Under Armour shirt with jeans and Nike running shoes.

As in Silicon Valley, there is a practical purpose to engineering a laid-back, feel-good office vibe: finding and keeping employees in a remote city of 3,800 people, where wages and other expenses are higher and the pool of qualified candidates is smaller than they would be in Anchorage.

The improvisational nature of both startup culture and life in remote areas is also part of Peacock's approach to his businesses: Rural Financial Services, Quyana Card (co-owned with his wife, Debbie), Alaska Process Service and Rural Credit Services. Financial services tends to be a conservative industry, with strict security and protocols, but tough logistics and high costs in rural Alaska mean concessions must be made.

When Peacock ordered his first ATM, he stored it in his living room. He has checked the machines as luggage when traveling to villages for installations.

Armored cars are not part of the supply chain as they are in larger cities. Peacock and his brother, Kavik, co-owner in the ATM business, order packages of cash from their bank's central vault. Agents on the ground take the bills by snowmachine, four-wheeler or pickup to ATMs in 13 communities from the North Slope Borough to the Dillingham Census Area. And those agents, like the one in Nuiqsut, are responsible for doing repairs.

Peacock uses his own truck to transport his three freestanding ATMs in Nome between venues. In the afternoon of that hectic Monday, he moved one from the site of the Nome Berry Festival — where cruise ship passengers with the luxury liner Crystal Serenity had congregated the previous day — back to its usual spot next to a vending machine in the lobby of air carrier Ravn Alaska.

The ATM had spent the night in the unlocked mini convention center, but there were no signs that anyone had tampered with it. Peacock and new employee Cameron Smith load the 200-pound machine into the back seat of his blue Chevrolet Silverado. It fits perfectly.

"If they ever make a new model ATM, it better not be 2 inches bigger," said Peacock. "I'd be curious to see how they actually do this in Anchorage."

Leaving the ATM for the better part of a day was a small risk, but the remote rural environment can serve as a form of security. The odds of stealing cash and escaping a small community where the only way out is by plane aren't very high. In Barrow, packages of cash Peacock had ordered were stolen, but later recovered when the perpetrators were caught. In Gambell, thieves tried unsuccessfully to pry the ATM open with a crowbar.

"Where are you going to go?" Peacock said. "Potential clients are always worried having an ATM is one more reason for someone to break into the store, but the break-ins have gone down in the stores where we have ATMs. We install additional security cameras and the ATM has GPS tracking on it."

Another form of security and an imperative to commercial success in rural Alaska is community goodwill. Upon hearing this story had morphed into a profile focused on him, Peacock, whose Inupiaq first name means "peaceful warrior," fired off an email saying he would be "totally embarrassed" if he wasn't on the record "giving credit where credit is due."

Peacock wrote that his hard work alone cannot explain why his businesses came into being and continue to exist. He was born and raised in Kotzebue and longstanding relationships with classmates, friends and relatives throughout the region have been instrumental, too. Wittingly or not, he was echoing billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who often comments that he won the "ovarian lottery" by being born in a time, place and society that allowed his talent for accumulating capital to thrive.

"This community and the entire NANA region raised us and taught us how rural Alaska works (and things that don't work well)," Peacock wrote.

Peacock, who has a bachelor's degree in business administration from Seattle Pacific University, brushes off the suggestion he is turning Nome into the financial capital of rural Alaska, but it seems that's exactly what he's after.

He has often considered moving to Anchorage to save on rent and wages, but he believes employees "that know rural Alaska and live in rural Alaska each day" benefit his businesses with their stronger connections to the region. And he likes the idea of doing his part to grow Nome's economy through employment, purchasing goods and paying rent.

"When I was starting, my No. 1 goal was hey, is there something I can start here in Nome that will bring money into the region?" said Peacock. "It's not like I'm just taking money from Nome and circulating it around. The bulk of our revenue is coming from all around."

Jeannette Lee Falsey

Jeannette Lee Falsey is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. She left the ADN in 2017.

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