The Colorado Company That Built Success by Hiring At-Risk Workers
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, across the United States, many young people labeled “at risk” struggle to find stable work and long-term career opportunities. In Colorado, one electrical contracting company decided to confront that challenge directly.
Weifield Group began hiring and training individuals who might otherwise be overlooked in traditional hiring processes.
Karla Nugent and Curt Andersen share the story of Weifield Group’s approach to hiring at-risk individuals and explain why investing in people has become a central part of the company’s success.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, |
| 0:17.9 | and we tell stories about everything here on this show, |
| 0:20.6 | from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between including your stories send them to our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. And today we bring you the story of Kurt Anderson, a man whose life was turned around by a company and Carl Nugent, one of the founding partners of that company. |
| 0:41.1 | Here's Robbie with the story. |
| 0:43.1 | Kurt Anderson's childhood was pretty normal, until tragedy struck. |
| 0:48.1 | 1987, I lost my brother Brian to a motorcycle accident. |
| 0:57.0 | Okay. my brother Brian to a motorcycle accident. And then started getting involved with some alcohol and marijuana. |
| 1:04.0 | It was just, uh, instead of turning it into something positive, I took it the wrong way. |
| 1:11.6 | I just went downhill from there. |
| 1:13.6 | And I did manage to stay in school and get my GED, though. |
| 1:18.6 | Just from there, you know, the alcohol got worse and worse. |
| 1:23.6 | And 21 years old, you know, cocaine and reduced to meth amphetamines. |
| 1:30.3 | I was in and out of jail, didn't really have a good job or anything like that or a career. |
| 1:35.3 | I was just in and out of restaurants doing short order cook type work. |
| 1:40.3 | You know, I had met a girl. We had some kids together and I was pretty much a knucklehead all through my 30s |
| 1:47.2 | she actually ended up leaving me because I was just out of control I would pay the bills or whatever but other |
| 1:55.1 | than that it was just in my addiction started getting felonies and getting in trouble with the law. |
| 2:03.6 | I caught my first felony in 2002, 2003, somewhere in there, |
| 2:11.6 | and was given a chance to do probation. |
| 2:14.6 | Didn't do so well at that. |
... |
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