Brandy Berg hoped to work for Chaves Consulting Inc. in Baker City for 25 years.

She got four months.

Berg, 42, who has lived in North Powder since 2002, was among 54 people who worked at a call center owned by Richard and Kathleen Chaves.

Berg and the others lost their jobs on Jan. 31 when the Oregon Health Authority declined to extend its $2.5 million-per-year contract with Chaves Consulting.

The contract, which had been in effect for one year, included up to five one-year extensions.

The Chaveses hope to secure new contracts with the state for call center jobs, but so far none has been offered.

“It was kind of a shock to all of us when we didn’t have a job any more,” said Berg, who earned two associate degrees from Blue Mountain Community College in June 2016.

She started working at the call center in September 2016.

Berg said the job not only improved the financial position for her family — she and her husband, Daniel, have three daughters — but she also enjoyed working in customer service.

“I looked forward to going to work every day,” Berg said. “They are the best employers I have ever worked for.”

The Chaveses paid their employees an average of $12 per hour, along with full benefits including health, dental and vision insurance.

Although Berg said her husband’s salary allows her family to “live from paycheck to paycheck,” they have had to drastically slow down repaying her $40,000 in college loans.

She even regrets a much smaller sum — the $300 she spent, while she was still working at the call center, for tickets for a concert this July.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have a car payment,” Berg said. “It really has damaged our family.”

She said she has yet to find a job comparable to the one she had with Chaves Consulting.

Neither have three of Berg’s former co-workers, Seana Duncan, David Manniselli and Taren Christensen, all from Baker City.

Duncan said she felt fortunate when Chaves Consulting hired her to work in the call center at the end of October 2016.

She had injured her right shoulder and was no longer able to work at the Safeway grocery store in Baker City.

Duncan, 27, who’s a single mother, said the call center job allowed her to stop using any state financial aid and to enroll her 4-year-old son, Jarrod, in a day care center.

“I was looking at buying a house in the next six months,” she said. “That’s not happening now, obviously.”

Duncan said she has enrolled in online courses through Blue Mountain Community College.

“I want to do what I can to improve myself, but without a degree in my hand, getting a clerical job here is not going to be easy,” she said.

Duncan, who grew up in Baker City and is familiar with the local job market, said the call center job was in her view a “unique opportunity” due to the type of work and the salary and benefits.

She said she remains optimistic that the Chaveses will be able to offer her another job.

“I know they’re not going to give up on us,” she said.

Manniselli moved to Baker City from Sedona, Arizona, about two years ago and was hired in February 2016 to work at the Chaves Consulting call center.

Manniselli said the loss of his job 2fi months ago has made it difficult to provide for his 8-year-old daughter, Moriah, whom he’s raising as a single father.

“Fortunately I had a little bit of savings to keep the wheels rolling,” he said.

Manniselli said he has resisted taking the first job available in part because he hopes Chaves Consulting will secure new contracts that would allow the company to rehire some of its former employees.

But he said he can’t wait much longer.

“Resumés are going out,” he said.

Christensen, who was hired at the Chaves Consulting call center in March 2016, said it “was probably the best place I’ve ever worked.”

She was it was “heartbreaking” when the Chaveses told employees that the state had not renewed the contract.

“We all cried,” Christensen said.

Like Berg, Duncan and Manniselli, Christensen said she would gladly accept another job offer from Chaves Consulting.

“I would jump on it in a heartbeat,” said Christensen, 31, a single mother who is raising her son, Cooper, 4.

“It’s been extremely difficult to find anything to make up for the call center job,” she said.

Kathleen Chaves said stories such as those from Berg, Duncan, Manniselli and Christensen frustrate her and her husband.

But the plight of their former employees, with whom the Chaveses have kept in touch, also motivates the couple to continue lobbying state officials to recognize how important the call center jobs were to Baker County’s economy.

“It broke my heart to talk to them and hear how they have lost their homes or are still trying to survive as single parents with children,” Kathleen Chaves wrote in an email to the Herald.

The Chaveses said in early February that they were “cautiously optimistic” after talking by phone with Gov. Kate Brown and meeting in person with Lynne Saxton, director of the Oregon Health Authority, the agency that contracted with Chaves Consulting to operate the call center.

Although state officials declined to renew the company’s contract, they said the state would have other contracts for which Chaves Consulting could apply.

“Just to be clear, there’s never been any question about the quality of your work,” Saxton told the Chaveses during a phone conversation Feb. 13. “It’s excellent.”

But although Saxton described one of those contracts as being available “in the near term” and involving about 20 jobs, Kathleen Chaves said she has yet to see any request for proposals for contracts with the state.

“None of this has come to pass,” she said.

Michelle McClellan, senior communications manager with the Oregon Health Authority, wrote in an email to the Herald on April 5: “Several opportunities are being discussed about OHP (Oregon Health Plan) call center work. No RFPs have been issued nor is there a time frame at this point.”

The Chaveses aren’t alone in expressing their disappointment about the lack of potential contracts with the state.

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., has discussed the call center situation with both Saxton and Brown, said Andrew Malcolm, the congressman’s communications director.

“We’re very disappointed that nothing has materialized yet,” Malcolm said. “This is something Greg is going to continue to advocate for, jobs in his district, especially in rural Eastern Oregon.”

See more in the April 14, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.