Baccarella retires at Coldwell Banker
Realtor, former Air Force pilot advises community to 'stay tuned'
Last updated 8/8/2019 at 8am
Pete Baccarella is retiring - again.
The long-time Cheney Realtor is planning to step aside from his management role at Coldwell Banker Tomlinson in order to free up more time for him and family. But he's not stepping away completely from the real estate business, electing to remain in that field to work with buyers and sellers in Cheney and Medical Lake.
Prior to 22 years in real estate, Baccarella spent 22 years in the U.S. Air Force - a career that first brought him to this region. He graduated from the University of Colorado in 1970 with an aeronautical engineering degree at a time when "Vietnam was cooking."
Having a low draft number and not desiring getting inducted into the Army, Baccarella said he went to the local Air Force recruiting office and told them about his degree and the private pilot's license he earned in 1968.
"They said, 'sign here,'" Baccarella said.
After pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, Baccarella was on his way to Vietnam in 1972 to serve as a forward air controller when the war chilled out and he was subsequently rerouted to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. From there, he was assigned to flight training to cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs from 1973-1974, and followed that with an assignment flying fixed wing aircraft for the Fairchild Air Force Base survival school from 1974-1976.
It was an assignment that changed his life. A musician, Baccarella played guitar and sang at various small venues in the area, including Cheney's Beehive Restaurant on 1st Street.
A fan of musicians such as Roy Clark and Chet Atkins, Baccarella said he would do a form of "Name That Tune" where he invited patrons to name that tune within so many notes and he would buy them a drink. One night at the Beehive, Baccarella got off one note before a blonde woman in the audience yelled out the song's correct name: "Turkey in the Straw."
Baccarella said he was upset, so he tried another song, which the woman again quickly identified as "Yakity Yak." He bought her the drink, and after finding out who she was, introduced himself to Jewel.
The couple's first date had Baccarella picking up Jewel at her mother's house near Cheney in a borrowed Winnebago and taking her to the Geiger Field NCO Club where Pete played guitar and sang. They were eventually married on Feb. 27, 1976.
"Turkey in the Straw and Yakity Yak brought us together," Pete Baccarella said.
Baccarella was transferred to Elgin AFB in Florida briefly before returning to Fairchild as aircraft commander and instructor pilot from 1978-1984 – flying KC-135s because the airframe is the same as the civilian Boeing 707, which would allow him to fly commercially after leaving the military. From 1984-1987 Baccarella was Chief of Tanker Forces at Eielson AFB in Fairbanks, Alaska, and was then sent to Ramstein AFB in Germany from 1987-1990 where he briefly conducted daily flight operations briefings - a desk job.
"I think he took it for me," Jewel said.
With a musical background herself, Jewel and Pete began playing at small venues in Germany - something they continue to this day locally - partly due to the fact that Jewel said she didn't want to live on base.
"We lived in a town outside the base, like Cheney," Jewel said. "They loved country music."
Pete was transferred to Malmstrom AFB in Great Falls, Montana in 1990, serving there as a KC-135R aircraft commander until retirement in 1992. Before that, he took part in Operation Desert Storm, flying 29 missions in 31 days over the skies of Iraq and Kuwait.
Pete said he was flying a mission on the first night of the operation, and took a picture of the plane's instrument panel that indicated latitude and longitude the moment they crossed into Iraqi air space.
"We didn't know what we were going to run into," he said, adding that they had several close calls during the operation. Under such circumstances, one learns to fall back more on training than instincts.
"With good training, you recognize the difference between what you think that you should do and what you know you should do," he said.
After Pete's retirement, the couple bought land outside Columbia Falls, Montana, and built a house. It was here their lives changed for a second time.
While working on the house, Pete fell off the roof and severely injured his back, effectively ending his airline pilot career. The couple ended up platting their land and developing it, taking this knowledge with them to Pueblo, Colorado in 1996.
Pete said the experience in Montana taught him that a person could make money in real estate if they knew what they were doing and were ethical. He got his Realtor's license in 1997 and opened Baccarella Properties not long afterwards.
In 2002, the family – the couple had added two more children while Stateside to the two they had during Pete's military career – moved to Cheney to be closer to Jewel's family, and Pete transferred his license to Washington state. He got on with Coldwell Banker, and in 2009, became the managing broker in the Cheney office after the passing of broker Dean Anderson.
Pete said he takes pride in knowing that he has trained many of the brokers who work in the Coldwell office, passing along his experiences and sense of fair play in the real estate market. It's something he said he'd like to see more of take place in the profession.
"To do that, I sincerely believe that the state should make getting a broker's license much more difficult and require considerably more training in real estate contract law and customer service before they start practicing," Pete said. "Second to that, a required mentor program for the first 24 months with a license is a good alternative."
The couple is inviting the community to a "Management Retirement" party, and to celebrate his 72nd birthday, on Saturday, Aug. 17, at Centennial Park from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. A food truck from Bene's Restaurant in Cheney will be on hand, courtesy of Pete, Jewel and Coldwell Banker Tomlinson – and don't be surprised if Pete's guitar makes an appearance too.
"Time to celebrate life, eat, drink, sing, dance, reminisce and have fun," the couple said in a news release.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
Reader Comments(0)