Call Mom, thought Derrik as he lay alone in the tall grass, bleeding heavily from what remained of his legs. No answer on her phone. He dialed his boss, offsite at the time. The call cut out after a few seconds, so Derrik texted him a photo of the gruesome scene, and started screaming for help.
The 16-year-old worker began the morning guiding a walk-behind trenching machine through a field, cleaving a 6-inch-deep ditch for a new fence line. The trencher lurched and strained as the blade slashed through the loosely packed dirt. His two closest co-workers, both wearing ear protection, faced away from where he dug.
Derrik kept the trencher running as he stepped forward, alongside the machine, to check his progress. Then the ditch sidewall suddenly collapsed, pulling his legs into the churning blades.
“I do remember yelling for a while,” he recalled later. “It could have been 10 seconds. Could have been five minutes.”
Alerted by their boss, workers rushed to Derrik’s aid and called 911. Derrik’s mom, who had stepped away from her phone to fold laundry, called him back just as the paramedics arrived.
“He told me he got hurt,” Derrik’s mom recalled.
“I told Mom not to get angry … upset,” he interrupted, then paused. “What did I say?”
They could not recollect the exact wording. But Derrik does remember his mom panicking.
“I cut my legs off. Then, of course, she yells at me.”
Sitting in the family’s living room a few miles outside Battle Ground, Wash., Derrik’s memory of his injury remains fuzzy. As he recently recounted that day in June 2023, his parents filled in gaps: a helicopter lifeflight to a Portland hospital; fits of thirst and exhaustion from the blood loss; a room full of loved ones waiting for him after emergency surgery; and waking up with both legs amputated — one above the knee, the other below.
Derrik had worked at Rotschy, a large construction company in southwestern Washington, for about nine months prior to his injury, and had recently joined a school program that allowed him to earn class credit for hours on the job. Cascade PBS has agreed to identify him by first name only to help protect his privacy as a minor.
Washington youth labor laws aim to provide overlapping layers of protection for both working minors and the thousands of students participating in work-based learning programs each school year. A Cascade PBS investigation — reviewing program records, case files and interviews with those involved — found that public officials and the company disregarded or misinterpreted guidelines at multiple levels ahead of Derrik’s injury.
Rotschy, which routinely hired teenage workers amid recent labor shortages, violated the law when supervisors assigned tasks known to be dangerous and prohibited for minors to perform. The Battle Ground School District, where Derrik attended, did not conduct an initial site inspection as required by the program. The state Department of Labor & Industries and school district officials disagree on who bears responsibility for ongoing safety monitoring.
L&I later issued significant fines against Rotschy for the incident, but has for years approved special “variances” for the company to hire minors despite its history of serious safety violations. And local school officials continued to promote the company’s work program — including after Derrik’s injury.
The system put in place to protect youth workers failed, said Mary Miller, a retired L&I youth labor specialist and nurse.
“A kid loses two legs, this is a huge failure,” she said. “This is beyond failure. I don’t even have words for how tragic and how completely preventable it was. It’s just infuriating to me.”
Rotschy declined multiple requests for comment on this story. For their part, Derrik and his parents say they do not hold Rotschy responsible. It was a fluke, an unlucky break — not the company being neglectful, they said. They hope officials can learn lessons from what happened, but that the school program does not end.
“I don’t think Rotschy failed my son in any way,” Derrik’s dad said. “All these events culminated into this accident.”
Student labor
Rotschy handles some of the biggest projects in southwestern Washington. The state Department of Transportation hired the company for a $28 million project to widen State Route 14 through parts of Vancouver in 2022. Before that, the City of Vancouver awarded Rotschy a $12 million contract to update Grant Street Pier.
At least as far back as the 2018-2019 school year, the company began hiring students enrolled in work-based learning programs. In the fall of 2023, about 21 students worked for Rotschy, according to public statements that the company has made. The Battle Ground School District declined to confirm what years Rotschy has hired students enrolled in their school’s work-based learning, and the state does not track that data.
Several activities fall under work-based learning — apprenticeships, job shadowing, health care clinicals and paid jobs. The state’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instructions certifies and monitors the school program that offers students the opportunity to explore career options before graduating through real-life work experiences. The latest Washington data shows more than 6,000 students around the state enroll in this program.
Companies participating in the school work program can also apply to L&I for “variances” that allow students to work longer hours or perform otherwise prohibited tasks as long as these periods are intermittent and closely supervised. Rotschy has received both types of variances.
Public statements from Rotschy managers show they viewed the worksite learning program as a way to tap into a new pipeline of enthusiastic workers. On a bi-monthly podcast with Battle Ground School District superintendent Denny Waters, Rotschy manager Nick Massie said the program helped the company target a stream of workers at a time there were more jobs than people to fill them.
“There’s a drastic shortage of workers in the workforce. Right, right. So if we can grab onto these students a little bit earlier. No. 1, they can learn life skills as they’re working with us. And perhaps …” Massie said in the podcast, trailing off before he got to his second point.
Massie also told Waters the company was initially nervous about hiring minors because of the perceived rules and regulations, but the student learner variance eased those concerns.
The school district hosted the 39-minute podcast, which also included interviews with the district’s work-based learning program coordinators, less than five months after Derrik’s injury in June 2023 yet made no mention of the incident.
The district declined to make Waters available for an interview and did not respond to questions about the podcast.
Massie reiterated Rotschy’s interest in student workers a few months later during an interview with a L&I investigator conducting a child labor investigation.
“He states that he supports the minors learning the work as he needs workers,” the investigator wrote in their notes dated February 2024.
A history of violations
In the hours after his emergency surgery, Derrik would awake briefly in his hospital room at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center unable to speak. He would flash a smile and offer a thumbs-up, his parents recalled. Often he’d then make a waving motion down toward his knees.
At those times, his mother would have to tell him again they had not been able to save his legs.
“Then he would be upset,” she said. “That happened again and again.”
L&I later determined Rotschy not only allowed Derrik to use a machine prohibited for minors to use — even with a variance — but that the company also did not properly train him on it or closely supervise him. The agency issued the company a $156,259 fine and one willful serious violation.
“We believe Rotschy knew better, they had been in this program a while,” Bryan Templeton, program manager for L&I’s employment standards division, said in an interview with Cascade PBS. “They should have known that they were not supposed to put that worker on that piece of machinery to dig that trench.”
A broader follow-up L&I youth labor standards investigation found that at least 35 times during the yearlong investigation period, the company had allowed seven minors, including Derrik, to operate or work in close proximity to machines minors are never allowed to use.
The agency also cited Rotschy for overworking 15 minors more than 230 times. This included allowing a 14-year-old to work more than 40 hours in a week during a school break and working minors during school hours. The $51,800 fine for these citations marked the second-highest fine L&I has given for youth labor violations in the past decade. The company has already paid this fine.
Most of these violations were not new to Rotschy or Massie. In 2019, a different L&I child labor specialist explained the same youth labor laws to Massie. Another underage worker had sustained minor injuries while working near a prohibited machine. In that investigation, L&I found the company was also working students longer hours than allowed. Based on those citations, the agency issued a $25,950 fine, also one of the largest in agency history for violating youth labor standards.
Rotschy has racked up another $305,863 in additional safety fines across both Oregon and Washington for more than 20 health and safety violations in the past decade. Most recently, in 2024 Oregon fined the company $13,834 following a worker injury. And in 2023, L&I issued Rotschy a $59,400 fine for not following safety laws for confined spaces when workers entered underground storm drain systems. Both are being appealed by the company.
In 2019, L&I temporarily placed Rotschy on the severe violator list, reserved for companies that are “resistant or indifferent” to safety regulations, after L&I fined the company for not following safety rules for working in trenches, one of the most dangerous jobs in construction. The company challenged those violations through the appeals process and the agency later reduced the citations and removed the company from the list.
Variance standards
Like a typical teen in their last year of high school, Derrik is rarely home. He spends most evenings out with his friends. Derrik said he applied for a job at Rotschy because friends and his older brother worked there.
“I enjoy working in the field, working with the guys, working with my hands,” he said. “It was fun. I really enjoyed it. I still do enjoy it.”
Debbie Berkowitz, a worker safety policy expert and advocate, said pre-apprenticeship programs like this work-based learning program should not be allowed in jobs with high injury and death rates, like construction or roofing.
“You need a certain degree of maturity to understand the dangers of the jobs. You also need a certain maturity to be able to say to a boss, ‘This is not safe and I cannot do this,’” Berkowitz said. “There’s no reason these companies can’t just try and bring on someone who’s 18.”
Companies ultimately hire minors because they want to pay them less, she argued: “It’s really about corporate greed. Why can’t they wait till they’re 18?”
There are no established requirements a company must meet to hire minors or participate in the work-based learning program, according to L&I. When applying for variances, companies just need to explain how a student would benefit from being able to work longer hours or use prohibitive machines.
Officials said a company’s history of labor and safety violations is not typically considered when they apply for a minor work permit, nor when companies apply for a variance or schools screen a company’s worksites for hazards before a student is placed. L&I is working to change that, according to agency officials.
Companies that want to hire workers under 18 have to first obtain a minor work permit, approval of which is automatic once paperwork is submitted, and have families sign a parent authorization form.
This then qualifies them to hire students in a work-based school program and receive a variance, as long as a company does not list tools that are always prohibited for those under age on its application. School districts determine what companies and students participate in work-based learning programs, according to OSPI documents.
Miller, the former L&I youth specialist, said it makes sense to have a process that involves checking a company’s history of injuries, child labor violations and health and safety citations before authorizing variances.
“This is a school-sanctioned activity. A variety of things need to be happening to check whether this is an appropriate place for a kid,” Miller said. “One could also argue that minor work permits are being provided to employers who really have no business hiring kids.”
L&I did revoke Rotschy’s student learner variance a few weeks after Derrik’s injury, and the company has not received one since. Rotschy never lost its minor work permit, which allows the company to hire students through a school’s work-based learning programs.
In the past few months, L&I started working on creating a set of standards for companies that want to receive student variances for prohibited work or longer hours.
“The way that the statute was written, it left so much wiggle room for approval and denial that really it would be almost impossible, without internal guidance, to maintain consistency of application of those statutes,” Templeton said.
L&I indicated the new internal guidance will include examining a company’s history of workers’ compensation claims, minor injuries, safety citations and labor violations. Those standards could go into effect by mid-December.
Suzanne Dover, a child labor specialist who conducted the 2024 youth labor investigation into Rotschy, said school districts bear some responsibility for keeping kids safe at work-based learning sites, but ultimately it is the employer’s duty to keep their workers safe on the job.
“We can’t go to every site, because we don’t just have the people to do that,” Dover said of L&I. “But OSPI does, and because the schools do that oversight role.”
School responsibility
Minors make up a growing part of the workforce, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In Washington, youth employment grew 46% among 16-19-year-olds over the past decade, and with that came a rise in companies found to have violated youth labor laws, a previous Cascade PBS investigation found.
The latest data from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction also shows an increase in participation in work-based learning and other career-oriented education programs in schools. In the 2021-2022 school year, 6,308 students enrolled in one of these programs.
A guidebook created by OSPI for the work-based learning program outlines that school districts are supposed to screen worksites — checking for hazards, making sure employers follow youth labor laws and minor workers receive safety training: “The district is responsible for ensuring that safety, liability, and risk for students is addressed when they participate in [work site learning].”
OSPI spokesperson Katy Payne disputed L&I’s assessment that OSPI has a safety oversight role in the program. She said that OSPI does not have the staff to monitor worksites, but pointed to a state law mandating that school district learning coordinators bear responsibility for ensuring that companies follow labor standards as well as health and safety laws.
School district program coordinators must make an initial site visit and follow up with regular visits. OSPI recommends two per semester. The guide does not set out any responsibilities for L&I in the program, but does for employers who “must provide a safe and healthy workplace.”
The school is responsible for the safety on site, Templeton said.
“They’re the ones who are supposed to engage in the agreements with the employers,” he explained. “They’re the ones that are supposed to coordinate the minor workers, … do the inspections and ensure that the work that the students are doing is commensurate with the program that they’re involved in.”
The Battle Ground School District laid out a different view of program requirements.
“Enforcement of workplace conditions and safety is managed by the Department of Labor and Industries,” wrote Amanda Richter, a spokesperson for the district.
Richter said program coordinators conduct an initial site visit to verify that employers have a valid minor work permit and that student workers receive training on workplace safety rules.
Though, according to L&I, that didn’t happen in Derrik’s case.
On that same podcast that featured Massie of Rotschy, two program coordinators for the Battle Ground School District said they conduct roughly 1,200 job site visits a year. The coordinators also said the program has grown significantly over the past decade, from 98 students and 80 jobsites to 300 students and 230 jobsites just in the Battle Ground School District.
“Our intent is to enrich students’ on-the-job experiences by helping them earn school credit, providing training on their rights and employer responsibilities and facilitating skills needed for future employment success,” Richter wrote.
Moving forward
In the early days of his recovery, Derrik set out a list of accomplishments he wanted to prove he could still do without his legs; rock-climb, ski and scuba-dive. He’s proud he has already done all three while also building for his future. This year he started his senior year in the Running Start program at Clark College with plans to study engineering.
He also gained a bit of independence earlier than most high schoolers, moving into a tiny home built to ADA specs behind his parents’ house.
The family can now laugh about the socks his mom was sorting the morning Derrik called her from underneath the trencher.
“I was all proud of myself, folding all these socks,” his mom said. “The joke is that he doesn’t need his socks anymore. And I did all these socks.”
Derrik said he thought because of his participation in Running Start, an OSPI program that allows high school students to take college classes, he would be considered an adult and able to work 40 hours a week and perform pretty much any job.
“I was also told that there were nearly no restrictions with machines either,” Derrik added. “I wasn’t told ‘You can’t use these. You can’t use those.’”
He said he does not remember if the school or a supervisor at work told him that. He also does not recall creating a safety plan with a program coordinator from school. But he said he did turn in weekly pay stubs for the two weeks he participated in the program before his injury. (The school district said that they do not collect timecards.)
Nina Mast, an analyst at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, said that while ultimately the employer is responsible for making sure they are following the rules, these programs can create confusion about who is accountable for the safety of the student worker.
“It really raises concerns about how these programs exist, and like whether they really need to be reformed or eliminated to begin with,” Mast said. “You’re having more children being driven to the labor market to fill the so-called labor shortage. You see employers violating the law because they’re treated like adults, but they’re not adults.”
Rotschy kept Derrik on salary throughout his recovery. He eventually returned to working at the construction company in the office, putting together estimates. And he remains there today.
Derrik still has the picture of his bloody legs he texted his boss. He said he pulls it up on his phone to look at it once in a while, a reminder of sorts of how far he has come. He wants to be able to eventually look at the picture without getting sad or scared.
“I’m kind of fighting my way through it and getting more accustomed to it,” he said. “I don’t like that it happened, but I’ve come to terms with it, accepted it. That photo kind of helps me.”
This article first appeared at Cascade PBS. It was produced by Crosscut, a service of the nonprofit public media organization Cascade Public Media, and is republished with permission. Visit crosscut.com/membership to support Crosscut’s independent journalism.
