Restaurateur turned Realtor remains community-centered

Janet Dalton, who got her real estate license in 1995, now works with Transitional Youth

By Nancy Townsley

The Times, Dec 3, 2009

Jaime Valdez / Times Newspapers

Tualatin Realtor Janet Dalton was honored as the city’s Business Person of the year in 1989 and Volunteer of the Year in 2004.

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For more than 20 years, Janet and Dave Dalton served a free Thanksgiving meal to Tualatin residents who came down to their family restaurant, which closed in 1999.

And for two years after that, the couple staged a Turkey Day dinner at the Tualatin Senior Center with their company, Tigard-based Dalton’s Northwest Catering, doing the culinary honors.

“We’ve always been real involved in the community,” said Janet, 53, now a Realtor with Prudential Northwest Properties in Lake Oswego.

That’s an understatement. Dalton, the mother of two grown daughters and a tireless volunteer for Lake Oswego schools, was named Tualatin’s Business Person of the Year in 1989 and queen of the Tualatin Crawfish Festival in 1991.

She also was selected as Volunteer of the Year for the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce in 2004.

It’s all in a day’s work for Dalton, who has earned a reputation for giving back to her neighbors and clients over the years.

“Businesses are built on the trust of the people in the community,” said Dalton, who welcomes visitors to her tidy office, the walls of which are ringed by family photographs, with an offer of coffee or water. “I want to appreciate that.”

During her foray into real estate the last 15 years, Dalton has found new ways — besides matching buyers with sellers and sellers with buyers — to help others.

She decorated the Tualatin Veterans of Foreign Wars hall and hosted a picnic for 700 military troops when they came back from the Middle East.

She threw a bang-up party when the VFW Hall had its grand opening.

And lately, Dalton has gotten involved in a project founded by her boss, Bert Waugh Jr., called Transitional Youth. The nonprofit’s goal is to get homeless youth off the streets of Portland and into secure homes and stable lives that are productive and drug-free.

“Most of the kids have been either abused or involved in drugs and alcohol,” said Dalton, whose caring gift of gab is a powerful antidote to the teenagers’ troubles. “You look them in the eye and they just want to talk to you.”

‘Always need to help’

For Dalton, an energetic woman with impeccable style and a can-do attitude, it just makes sense to give back. She feels as if she’s living a charmed life, and wants others to experience some of that fulfillment as well.

She’s enamored with Transitional Youth’s intentional plan to find street teens who are ready to make changes in their lives and willing to do what it takes to commit to a brighter future.

Dalton has visited and served in several Transitional Youth facilities, including the nonprofit’s Portland drop-in center, a boys’ home in Vancouver, Wash., and a working ranch in Battleground, Wash.

“I just love the concept of the ranch,” said Dalton, who worked in her parents’ business growing up. “They each have an animal to care for, and the process helps move them toward school and a job.”

Waugh, who teams with Tigard resident Gary Gorsuch to run the ranch, encourages all Prudential Northwest agents to get involved in Transitional Youth, Dalton said. Many do, but the effort really caught fire with her.

On Nov. 17, Dalton put on her second wine-tasting event to benefit Transitional Youth. In February, she raised $500 that way.

And, every time Dalton sells a house, she donates a portion of her fee to Transitional Youth “in honor of the person I sold the house for,” she said.

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