by Daniel Geiter
Andrew Lack works with PJALS as an administrative assistant through the AARP Senior Community Service Employment Program. Andrew is most passionate about three social justice issues. Discrimination has been a passion of his since he was very young. He has had strong anti-war feelings going back as far as Vietnam where he refused to sign up for the draft, and his passion has continued since. Smart justice has been is a more recent passion for him. In part he discovered it through his experience being homeless and seeing the way that society marginalizes those members of our society.
Andrew is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and put himself through college as a civil engineer at Berkley. He became a junior partner in a firm and then worked for himself for about ten years. He began teaching at Laney Community College in San Francisco and became the chair for the Architect and Engineering department.
As community colleges lost public funding and the politics of the program became too much, he decided to get back into engineering and consulting, but found that the majority of his clientele had either died or moved away. He was also struggling with health concerns.
He decided to move to Spokane, as he had family in the area. He took about five years to recover from his health issues. Andrew struggled to find employment and for several years was homeless and lived in shelters. He has now been working with the AARP Senior Community Service Employment program.