SEKIU — When Denise Dunne DeVaney lost her job in 1999 due to budget cuts at Clallam Bay Correctional Center, she faced a stark choice.

She could either leave the Sekiu community she loved and relocate to a city that offered more employment opportunities, or start her own business in Sekiu by getting really innovative.

DeVaney opted for innovation.

“I thought, ‘Well, things are beginning to happen with the Internet,’ ” recalls DeVaney, 55, who still lives with her husband in Sekiu.

“So I retrained in Web work and Web design.”

DeVaney quickly realized that her strength wasn’t in designing Web pages.

It was, however, in writing content for Web pages.

Thanks to contacts she cultivated in Port Angeles, DeVaney founded her own business, TextPRO Writing Services, from her home in 2000.

She conducted all her work via telephone and the Internet without any need to meet face-to-face with her clients.

But an obstacle remained.

“In the beginning, it was really a challenge for me because I had a dial-up Internet provider,” DeVaney said.

“After all, this is Sekiu.”

But something happened in 2002 that allowed her business to take-off.

Sappho gap solution

That year, a $1.7 million, 26-mile fiber-optic cable was installed in the West End between Qwest Communication’s fiber-optic line near Port Angeles and CenturyTel’s fiber optics in Forks.

The “Sappho gap,” as it was called, had been bridged.

Soon after that public-private project was completed, DeVaney asked her local phone company, CenturyTel, to hook her home up with a high-speed, integrated services digital network line.

“Since then, I’ve been able to do real work and be much more competitive,” DeVaney said.

That experience has turned DeVaney into a believer that long-distance e-work jobs might help towns like Sekiu survive in the 21st century.