Katrina Morrell Gasser, center, a fifth-generation Astoria native with Tongue Point Job Corps Center for the past 10 years, listens to a speech by Tita Montero during Tongue Point's 50th anniversary celebration. Gasser succeeds Montero as community liaison for Tongue Point Job Corps.

“I’m Tita Montero; I’m the BCL (business community liaison); and this is my last day,” said Montero Monday during a student assembly as part of Tongue Point Job Corps Center’s 50th anniversary, her last event.

The hundreds gathered in Tongue Point’s gym Monday stood and applauded Montero, who’s dedicated her seven years as the public face of Tongue Point to promoting the positive impact of the center’s staff and students. Montero started early this year as the executive director of the Seaside Downtown Development Association.

A familiar face succeeds her.

Katrina Morrell Gasser, a fifth-generation Astorian employed with Tongue Point for the past 10 years, most recently as a work-based learning adviser, started recently as business community liaison.

“I did not think I’d be working with youth, and I did not think I’d be back home,” said Morrell Gasser, who started as a residential adviser at Tongue Point at age 22.

After graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in psychology, Gasser spent six months in a similar position at the Barli Development Institute for Rural Women, a nonprofit vocational school in central India, before returning home and seeing an ad in The Daily Astorian for Tongue Point.

“I knew this was where I wanted to go, because of my experience at Barli,” said Morrell Gasser, adding that she’s thrilled to inherit Montero’s position. Her focus, she said, is taking her background in work-based learning experience and expanding job-placement opportunities for students.

When she also saw an ad in paper for a position at Job Corps seven years ago, Montero said she didn’t really know much about it.

A University of Washington graduate with a master’s degree in library science, she had worked in that field before moving into health care administration for 27 years. Running a health plan for the U.S. Department of Defense, Montero said, she’d become familiar with working with members of Congress.

But as a child on vacation on the North Coast, the Seattle native had promised herself that one day she’d live in Seaside. She subscribed to the Seaside Signal for seven years before moving in 2002 to open Montero Sisters Fabrics with her sister-in-law. Then during the Great Coastal Gale of 2007, Montero started at Tongue Point, which she said meshed with both her skill set and her values as a person.

“It’s been a long history,” Montero said about trying to improve the center’s reputation. “It hasn’t all been a bed of roses.

“Personally I think I’ve done an excellent job in increasing the positive image, and increasing the knowledge that we exist.”

The SDDA came to her last year, Montero said, asking her to be its director, while former director Laurie Mespelt focused on special events coordination. Montero, who has been a SDDA member since 2002 through her fabric store, said her focus is on building the organizational infrastructure of Seaside’s downtown association, along with its membership.

“If you have a healthy downtown, you have a healthy town,” Montero said, who’s also on the Seaside City Council and governing boards of the Seaside Museum & Historical Society, the Seaside Chamber of Commerce, Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare and as a city council liaison to the Seaside Library Foundation Board and Clatsop Economic Development Resources, based in Seaside.

To put it succinctly, she said, “It’s going back to my hometown.”