Gary Lundquist has always been eager to succeed. His first day on the job as a mechanic at Boeing in 1996, he asked to take a test to show he could read blueprints.

A year later, Lundquist won a coveted place on the four-year apprentice machinist program to learn how to operate massive computer-controlled machines that make wing parts.

He had job protection while in the apprenticeship program. But by the time he finished in May 2002, Boeing was in a tailspin, laying off thousands of workers.

Like everyone else in his apprenticeship class, as soon as Lundquist graduated, he was unemployed.

Lundquist, 42, is an achiever. But it's hard for even the most optimistic and determined among former manufacturing workers to succeed in the new economy.

Convinced that manufacturing was set to shrink further, Lundquist embarked on a well-laid plan to recover.

In October, after 15 months of focused effort and sacrifice, his plan collapsed.

Following dad's steps

Lundquist raised a large family — five kids, three still in school — and worked 15 years as a welder and fabricator at a trailer company in Kent before joining Boeing.

His dad had spent 42 years at Boeing, working his way up to procurement manager. The senior Lundquist traveled around the world to suppliers that made parts once manufactured here.

Lundquist followed his dad for Boeing's better wages and health-insurance benefits.

Once there, getting the machinist apprenticeship was a big deal. Between the training and work, he often left home at 6 a.m. and wasn't back until 9 p.m.

Ever positive, Lundquist shows no bitterness that those four years of effort ended with a layoff.

"Boeing doesn't owe me anything," he said. "I feel I got more out of it than they did."

When he left Boeing, he was earning $29 an hour. Yet initially, the family coped well with the layoff.

The family home near Graham is a two-acre testament to self-sufficiency. From the front, it looks to be a typical subdivision house with a view of Mount Rainier. But around the back, it's a real farm.

In a field behind the house, the Lundquists raise their own cattle for beef. A chicken coop provides eggs, and a tiered vegetable garden yields organic produce. Lundquist's wife, Bonnie, cans fruit and fish.

"We never needed much money to survive," Lundquist said.

To bring in extra cash after her husband's layoff, Bonnie started part-time work at Starbucks.

Lundquist, who has always been a handyman, kept busy too. He put new second-story flooring in the house. He did small construction jobs for neighbors. He built a barn for a guy over in Roy.

He earned 100 credit hours toward an associate's degree in business at Pierce College.

A new start

But where can a highly skilled machinist, a do-everything guy, find a new career?

In 2003, Lundquist applied to become a trooper with the Washington State Patrol.

"Jobs in the manufacturing field are going away," he said.

With the State Patrol, "I'll have the security of having a job for the rest of my life," he added. "As far as I know, they've never laid off any state troopers."

But first, he would be tested: The Patrol cadet program was even more grueling than the Boeing apprenticeship.

After a rigorous initial vetting process, Lundquist was among a handful of candidates selected from around 300 applicants. He began a long path to a new career.

First he took a six-week basic-training class, living at the State Patrol Academy in Shelton, Mason County, and going home only on weekends.

Then came a stint of on-the-job training, guarding the governor's mansion for almost a year. Last summer, he entered the final 16-week State Patrol boot camp.

Weekdays, he lived in barracks at the academy, sharing a room with a guy in his 20s.

Lundquist passed stiff physical tests as he ran, swam and did push-ups alongside the younger cadets. He was sprayed with pepper spray and tear gas.

His wife and kids saw him on weekends. "I'm surviving," Bonnie said in August. "But it hasn't been easy."

With no state-trooper jobs in the area, they planned to leave their home of 14 years and move to Skagit or Island counties when he graduated.

On a sunny fall Saturday, 18 months into the cadet program, Lundquist sat at a kitchen table doing homework — filling in copious forms to document a make-believe auto accident.

As a cadet, he was earning $10 an hour less than he had 2 ½ years earlier at Boeing. It came to $36,000 a year.

"I think the rewards in the end will be worth it," he said.

A plan falls through

But in the final week of October, only weeks from graduation, Lundquist quit the State Patrol Academy.

He explained later to the Employment Security Department that his sergeants had said they were going to recommend his termination.

"They asked me to rethink whether or not I wanted to be a trooper," Lundquist said in December, his voice atypically downbeat.

Lundquist said that during two car-pursuit exercises late in the training, he had refused demands to drive faster because he thought it wasn't safe.

"They saw something in my personality that wasn't quite aggressive enough," he said.

The State Patrol would say only that it was Lundquist's decision to leave.

"There's a lot of things in life that suck, but they happen anyway," Lundquist said.

"It's disappointing I did all that and don't have anything to show for it," he said. "But I learned some things down there that will help me in life."

Trying to bounce back

Lundquist was back where he was a year and a half earlier. Unemployed.

As the year ended, he applied for work as a corrections or police officer. He considered going back to welding and maintenance work.

In January, Bonnie took a job driving a school bus. She kept her part-time Starbucks position.

By February, Lundquist had shucked off the disappointment and was optimistic again.

"I still feel good about myself," he said.

Lundquist said he knows of security-guard job openings at $10 to $15 an hour but is holding out for something better. He is waiting to hear from the Vancouver, Wash., police department.

Mid-March, he built a front deck and signed up for a four-week course for a commercial driver's license. He hears there'll be openings this summer driving a dump truck for a local sand-and-gravel company.

It's almost three years since he lost his job at Boeing.

"Good work takes longer to find," he said.