What Brought You To Colorado?

What brought you to Colorado? Were you born here, or like many of us did you come from somewhere else?

I'm asked by candidates all the time if I'm a native and I have to acknowledge that I am a transplant though at this point I've been in Colorado longer than many natives have been alive. For some, the allure is Denver, the queen city of the Rockies with it's great array of sports, entertainment, and cultural amenities. For me it's always been about the mountains. As my Human Resources colleagues well know I can't seem to get enough of the high country. Good weather or bad, come Friday my wife and I are usually heading for the hills. This last weekend is a prime example. Though mountain folk recognize April as mud season when there is usually too little snow to ski but too much to officially kick off hiking season, this year's weather has been anything but normal. On Friday we loaded up the bikes with the intent of doing some riding at altitude and headed off for the Buena Vista area.

Saturday we woke to one of the prettiest snowstorms I've ever seen. Big fluffy snowflakes floated down all day and by afternoon the trees and peaks were sporting a fresh mantle of white.

Sunday dawned sunny, fresh but not too cold, with about 12-15 inches of spring snow on the ground. Needless to say the bikes never came off the roof rack, but thankfully we had brought our snowshoes just in case. Little did we know that it would turn out to be an epic day, the kind that stays in my mind whenever someone asks me about "why am I in Colorado?"

All this is a rather long segue into mentioning an interesting article in the Denver Post this weekend that talked about the fact that despite Colorado losing a lot of jobs in this recession people continue to move here. From 2008 to 2010 the state lost 130,000 jobs but the population grew by 145,000. Though there was no one within miles of my wife and I on Sunday I know that the kind of day we had is in part why so many people want to make Colorado home. While no one really knows when, eventually the job creation rate will increase as we leave the recession behind. Pinnacol will be there protecting those new workers in those new jobs. The 600 employees I work with are very proud of our Colorado roots and our Colorado focus.