Commissioner touts business background

Interim County Commissioner Cal Scott had a couple of jobs in the 1960s that made him realize his calling in life would be helping people.

One of the stints was selling baby pictures up and down the East Coast. He was the salesman who showed up at the table after the photographer was done to seal the deal and persuade parents to buy various photo packages of their children.

“It was at a time when I was thinking of what to do with the rest of my life,” he recalled. “It was a good opportunity to get a widespread understanding of people.”

The other job that honed his people skills was as a bill collector for a finance company in Reno, Nev. 

“As a collector, it put me in touch with my human self,” Scott said. “It’s where I developed an affinity for helping people.”

Scott is running as a Republican for the remaining two years of the late Commissioner Jim Dupont’s term in District 1. Scott was appointed to the commissioner job after Dupont’s death earlier this year.

Scott tried his hand at several things before he settled into a career in real estate and home ownership education in Washington. He was always a studious fellow, he said.

“I was also blessed with the ability to get passing grades without having to do a lot of homework,” he said.

Scott’s family roots in the Flathead Valley go back to 1897 when his forefathers moved from North Dakota to Kalispell. He spent much of his youth either visiting or living with his grandparents in Kalispell. He attended Columbia Falls High School for a time, then moved to Polson, where he graduated from high school in 1961.

“I was one of those all-around kids,” he said. He played football, ran track and played the alto saxophone in the school band.

After high school, the military seemed like a good idea, so he joined the Army and served two years.

Scott then had his sights set on a career in architecture and moved to Reno, where his father lived, to attend the University of Nevada. The school, however, didn’t have an architecture program, so he enrolled in the civil engineering program. He attended one quarter, then dropped out.

He later did engineering-related work in The Dalles, Ore., where he did a mapping project and worked on a transmission line design.

Another job he had before he got into real estate in Washington was helping chain department store W.T. Grant open new stores in California. He did such a good job the company dubbed him the “Golden Boy of the Western Region.” On one occasion his promotional effort helped the company increase its credit sales more than 300 percent at one Los Angeles area store.

From there Scott bounced back to Reno to help his father campaign for an ombudsman position, after which he headed to Washington. 

He became a Realtor in 1972 and operated a consulting firm in the mid-1970s. Around that time he also became an educator for consumers, something he started as a “prospecting tool” in the real estate business.

What he realized was that consumers were hungry for information about how to buy a home, and homeowner education became a big part of Scott’s life. He served as executive director of the Washington Community Housing Network for several years and founded Enhancing the Homeownership Ideals for Communities in 1989. He moved that nonprofit business to Kalispell in 2001.

Scott taught mortgage finance and homeownership education at military installations and in 1991 developed the Washington State Migrant/Seasonal Farm Worker Housing Program.

The focus of these efforts was to teach consumers how to empower themselves, he said.

The 1990s were a blur of activity for Scott in the homeownership arena. In 1997 he founded Homeownership Center for Homebuyer Education in eight major cities. He won several awards for his work.

Scott’s quest to help people extended to his personal life as well. He and his wife, Laurale, were therapeutic foster-care parents and raised two young women “who are doing very well.”

He said he believes he brings a “broad base of knowledge and experience” to the Flathead County Commission that has given him the ability to understand the workings of county government.

Scott said filing for bankruptcy in 2009 doesn’t affect the integrity he feels he brings to the office of county commissioner. 

He and his wife were discharged from $229,154 in unpaid debt. U.S. Bankruptcy Court records showed Scott had accrued unsecured debt on 22 credit cards.

Scott said he was forced into bankruptcy because a number of investments and annuities “disappeared overnight” during the national recession.

“I can’t go into the details, but hopefully our children and grandchildren will see some of” the investment income, he said, adding that he’s still working on that front.

In a statement issued prior to the primary election, Scott said, “We like thousands of others in our Flathead and across the United States were taken advantage of by corrupt practices, creating one of the worst economies to hurt Americans since the Great Depression. I and many responsible Americans lost our entire life’s saving as a result of the Madoff crisis, predatory lending and subsequent financial meltdown.”

Eight of the 22 credit cards were used by Scott; the rest were used by other family members. He acknowledged, however, that he was responsible for all 22 cards.

“When we went bankrupt, we were not late on any payments and our credit scores were in the 800s,” he said.

Scott made a point of noting that when his 2008 Subaru Tribeca was repossessed, he “cleaned and polished it” before giving back the keys. He also made sure a home they were forced to give up was “spotless and winterized” when they moved out.

“Anyone who knows me knows my integrity, sincerity and moral principles,” Scott said. “This nasty stuff of [calling me] Credit Card Cal is baloney.”

Scott said he now has two debit cards and noted that “people will be repaid; let’s just say that.”

The frustration he felt over his lost investments prompted Scott to participate in one local Occupy movement rally, during which he carried a sign that said: “Arrest Domestic Terrorists, Start at Wall Street.”

“It’s the one and only time I ever demonstrated over anything,” he said. “My wife and I were discussing the travesty of our lives’ work being lost due to the lack of oversight in banking and I said, ‘I’m going down there.’ Someone handed me a sign and I walked around for 25 minutes and went home.”

 Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.