Karen Harris-Cook: From Perms to Pizza to PCs
Cyberspace is scary! All sorts of foul little beastie lurk in the darkness of cyber-nooks and crannies, waiting to pounce on your personal info, stalk your Web travels or infect you with a repulsive virus. It’s a jungle out there, and Rehoboth Beach resident/computer expert Karen Harris-Cook has stood face-to-face with those binary delinquents and lived to tell about it.
For nine years Gigabeach Computer Services has replaced power supplies, scoured hard drives, rescued data and performed exorcisms on worms, trojans, viruses, and spyware. (Some customers hang their heads as they admit that they did, in fact, boldly click where no man—or woman—had clicked before.)
It wasn’t always PCs and processors for Karen. In fact, she attended cosmetology college while she was still in high school, earning her certification to work professionally in a salon. She would probably still be styling hair had it not been for another tiny creature she encountered in her work: head lice. Parents would plop their buggy kids into her chair and then act horrified when Karen summarily ejected them—and their multi-legged passengers—from the salon. She would then spend the next three hours disinfecting her chair, her equipment, and her hands. In 1985 she finally had enough and chose to leave the world of cosmetology.
By this point, Karen had come out to her parents. She worked various jobs, but never really settled into any one occupation, so she decided to not only find herself, but to find herself in Florida. It turned out to be a good move. She landed a job delivering pizzas for a busy Domino’s, quickly working her way up to manager. She missed the freedom and interaction with customers that she enjoyed when driving, so she went back to the delivery side of the business. It was during that time that she met her first real girlfriend, Lisa. Sadly, they had been together for a scant two years before Lisa succumbed to Hodgkin’s disease at just 26 years of age. Karen was devastated, but worse yet, her girlfriend was not “out” to her family, so Karen stood quietly by as Lisa’s parents carted off everything they had acquired as a couple. Another case for marriage rights!
After Lisa’s passing, Karen wandered in and out of jobs; eventually ending up back in Baltimore where two events would change her life forever. The first was in 1992 when she met Colleen Cook, the service representative at the auto repair shop that serviced Domino’s vehicles. The attraction was immediate, and Karen recalls that “Colleen played me like a golden fiddle.” What really won Karen’s heart, however, was Colleen’s culinary charms. “She cooked for me—and I never left.”
The second event that changed her life was a phone call from her father. He was working at the Department of Defense and insisted that Karen take a look at this newfangled thingamajig called the “Internet.” She didn’t warm up to the idea right away, but he persisted, and it wasn’t long until she was hooked. She begged her dad to get her a computer, and her first official act was to take the machine apart and put it back together again. Karen began to apply for IT jobs at various businesses. Each time she was accepted, she studied the job description, and taught herself the required skills.
Word of her computer savvy began to spread, and she was recruited by the IT department of a large company that had an office in Milford, Delaware. The pay was wonderful; Karen and Colleen already had a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, so they pulled up stakes and moved here full time. In addition to her corporate job, Karen taught computer technology for over three years at Wilmington College. She eventually earned an impressive list of accreditations, including the coveted Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certifications
Karen’s free spirit did not mesh with the structure and protocols of the corporate setting. She freely admits that she was so used to the autonomy of pizza delivery that, try as she might, she simply couldn’t deal with the day-to-day restraints of a large company. She had to “do her own thing,” and that thing ended up being Gigabeach Computer Services.
She eventually opened a storefront, healing sick machines and teaching computer skills to Brownie troops and kindergarten classes. She wrote regular articles for the Cape Gazette (including her shocking account of contacts with Internet pedophiles after she posed as a 12-year old on My Space).
Toward the end of our interview, I asked her what problem she encountered most often at Gigabeach. I fully expected a diatribe on viruses, nasty porn sites, or laptops filled with sand. But she thought for a few seconds and said, “What is it about Rehoboth Beach and red wine?” Apparently red wine (with its sugar and acid) spilled into an operating laptop is the kiss of death. She asked me if I would please advise my readers to put their laptops away after they pour that second glass. So, dear Reader, sip and click to your heart’s content—but consider yourself warned.
Bob Yesbek is a Rehoboth Beach resident. Email Bob Yesbek