Jim Romine is not only a Waitsburg City Council member, retired Walla Walla County deputy sheriff, husband, father, and doting grandfather; he is also a skilled combine operator.

Since Romine was sixteen, he has had a passion for harvest work, driving trucks, and operating combines on the most challenging wheat fields in the world.

"He loves working grain harvest," said Virginia, his wife, who does not share his passion. She knows the dangers of operating combines and worries about Jim almost as much as she misses him during harvest.

Romine was born in Merced, California, and raised in Prescot...