Perfecto Puentes fondly remembers his first computer, a Commodore 64, and the computer he built with components purchased at a Radio Shack near his childhood home in California.
"It was a really slow computer. It had an Intel 8088 processor, which is a lot dumber than my watch," he says with a laugh. "I had to grab an old TV that we weren't using and cable it up to the computer. But it was fun."
Despite his early exploration into tech, Perfecto, a local operations manager for Ziply Fiber's field operations team, didn't plan on going into a technical field. His first plan was to go into the Jesuit priesthood.
Or a Mariachi band. Or the police force.
"I knew that I was strong in mathematics and in electronics. But truly my desire was helping people," he says. "The decision to become a priest was because I wanted to be able to help youth. The computer wasn't necessarily a means of what I was going to do in the future."
At the last minute, Perfecto chose to pursue an engineering degree instead of answering the call to priesthood or his family's Mariachi tradition. After testing too high for the military police, Perfecto took a job repairing telephone equipment.
"Customers would send their home phones back, I'd look at them and fix them," he says. "I'd actually work on them on the component level. That was my first real job in what you would call telecoms."
Years of moving around the industry and traveling the country landed Perfecto near Kirkland Washington, where he fell in love with the landscape. He joined Ziply Fiber in 2013, when it was still Frontier.
"I guess the thing I like about my role is that the technology is constantly changing," he says. "But one thing that's constant is people, right? You have to try to explain to people in their terms how things work. Sometimes you get the people that are like, oh my God, I didn't know this. And other people are like, well, what can I do to keep it the same? And then there are those that are just like, 'I can't deal with it.'"
Perfecto's desire to help people comes through in his day-to-day work. "I think he's super helpful and he's always going above and beyond," says Field Tech Eric Jimenez. "If he gets a message on Teams from whoever it is, whatever it is, he'll get on it."
Combine that enthusiasm with a can-do attitude, and you get a Ziply Fiber truck rigged with Christmas lights. At least that's what happened at the toy drive in 2022.
In the spirit of volunteering for every opportunity, Perfecto jumped into the toy drive, Ziply Fiber's annual event that partners with local organizations to collect thousands of toys for kids in need. Perfecto arrives before dawn to decorate the trucks with Christmas lights and pack them with toys.
"There was a joke made in a meeting during the toy drive that we should just follow Perfecto around and watch the magic happen," says Community Development Manager Jenn Harvey. "But this is the absolute truth. Whatever we throw at him, he never even flinches. From setting up teepees in record time, to figuring out how to put Christmas lights on Ziply Fiber vans in the dark while it's freezing, or answering my 1,000 questions, he makes it happen with a smile on his face and maybe wearing a Santa hat. Perfecto is reliable, he is kind, he is genuine and really we are all just lucky to have him at Ziply Fiber."
Perfecto raises his hand for volunteer projects because it's a chance to learn something new, and of course, to help.
"I love my job because I get to help people, whether it's a coworker dealing with the situation, a technician that is going through something and just needs someone to listen, a customer that's having issues," he says. "I can help people in what I do every day. That is why I love my job."
