Melva Randrup was born and raised in the Philippines, in a large city about an hour away from Manila. Her first sight of Petersburg was the same as most people who fly in for the first time: where’s the airport?
        Melva traveled to Petersburg in July of 1995 for a visit, something she never had planned. Not just a trip to Alaska, but to the United States at all. After receiving an Associates in Fisheries in the Philippines, Melva traveled overseas for work in places like the United Arab Emirates and Cypress. She was on a visit home to the Philippines before taking a new job in Bahrain when she met her husband, Jeff, and the rest, as they say, is history.
        They met on December 10th, 1994, while he and a friend were there as tourists. Their trip almost hadn’t happened, the original plan had been to go to Germany. After the two of them met, Jeff convinced her to visit Alaska, so in 1995 she went. Their plan had been to visit each other back and forth for a while but that changed when they got married on September 24th, 1995. They’ve been married now for 26 years and their family includes three children and six grandchildren.
        Petersburg was difficult for Melva to get used to, especially having come from such a large city and to a climate much, much colder than she was accustomed to. Her first year was tough and other factors like the culture difference, daylight changes, and the time difference with the Philippines made it even harder. It took two years for Petersburg to grow on Melva but after that, she realized she loved it here.
       When she first arrived, Melva started working at Icicle Seafoods, before it became OBI. She started in the processing department but quickly moved up to a supervisor position before becoming the Quality Assurance Supervisor for the whole facility. Apart from QA duties, Melva was in direct contact with buyers, including overseas buyers from places like Japan and Germany. Melva worked at Icicle/OBI for 22 years before starting with PMC as the Materials Assistant in 2017. The position was challenging and fun and gave her a lot of opportunity to interact with people.
When the previous manager left in 2019, Melva applied for and was hired as the Materials Manager. That position has come with its own unique challenges such as trying to make sure the hospital gets the supplies they need in a timely manner. Island living makes that difficult on its own and COVID hasn’t made things any easier. One thing that has come out of the difficulty in supply chain issues is that Melva has created many strong relationships with managers from other hospitals. For her first six months as manager, Melva had no assistant and was doing everything on her own. Now though, she has Nicole and Laura and said that she is glad to have them.
Melva doesn’t spend all her time in the warehouse at PMC, she has several hobbies that get her out to enjoy Petersburg. She loves to go camping, fishing, and hiking as well as having gatherings at her house (when she can) for barbecues, karaoke, or just hanging out around their fire pit. Melva and Jeff are also in the process of building a house in the Philippines for their (very) future retirement!