Trumbull students get an education in county services

By Ed Runyan

Students saw inmates in the county jail, but the inmates couldn’t see them.

WARREN — In government offices, courts, nonprofit organizations and schools throughout Trumbull County, nearly 100 area high school students shadowed community leaders to learn what is involved in their line of work.

Among the most common reactions from the students?

“I didn’t know how much work was involved,” said Leah Nicholas, a junior at Champion High School who shadowed Diana Marchese, the county recorder.

“It was a lot more complex than I thought it would be,” said Tara Knight, a senior at Maplewood High School, who spent Monday morning in the county elections board office.

And as for the tour of the county jail, it was an eye opener for Julia Guerrieri of Girard to see that some inmates sleep on cots on the floor.

“Those beds look real uncomfortable,” she said.

Nick Brown of Bloomfield said he found the cots on the floor to be the most surprising thing he saw.

Nick was among students who also toured the county courthouse, where Judge Andrew Logan of common pleas court explained that a criminal trial had been delayed because the defendant had been brought over to court in jail attire instead of street clothes, and court personnel were trying to find a dress shirt for him to wear.

Students interviewed at the courthouse and recorder’s office said they didn’t get to pick the community leader they shadowed and didn’t have a specific interest in working in government.

“I didn’t even know what it [county recorder’s office] was,” Julia acknowledged.

The event was organized by the Trumbull County Educational Service Center, which assists the county’s public schools with special education, substitute teachers and other things.

Sarah Graham, a corrections officer at the jail, showed students most of the four-story facility, including areas where inmates are kept who are suspected of sex crimes or other serious felonies, the female section, and areas where inmates are kept on suicide watch.

Fortunately for the students, the hallways where the students walked were lined by a darkened glass that allowed the visitors to see the inmates but prevented the inmates from seeing the students.

“Being there, working all day would take pretty thick skin. It would be depressing,” Nicholas said.

Leah and Julia spent about an hour with Marchese, who showed them the process the office uses to record and retain about 100 new real estate deeds, mortgages and other documents per day.

Marchese explained that such documents dating back to 1980 can be viewed online, which has resulted in some companies’ doing title searches on property from faraway locations.

But she stressed the need for title companies wanting to do a thorough job of finding any outstanding mortgages owed on a property to come to the recorder’s office in the County Administration Building on High Street and the courthouse across the street to search additional records.

In fact, Jennifer Juillerat, a title searcher for South Park Title Agency Inc. of Warren, said her company searches back 60 years to find any type of mortgage or lien that might affect the value of a property.

Marchese was happy to show the girls the technology that her office has used for three years to quickly send a day’s worth of documents — usually around 300 pages — over a computer to an automated microfilm center in the Wean Building on High Street.

The microfilm versions are kept in an underground location in Pennsylvania as a backup if anything happens to the electronic or paper versions, Marchese said.

Leah asked whether the economy has caused business to drop in the recorder’s office.

Marchase said fees collected by her office have been about $300,000 less in each of the last three years than they were in 2005 because of the drop in the real- estate market.

runyan@vindy.com