![Reaching out. Christopher Lesh, student at Central Catholic High School, serves ice cream during the event on March 2, 2025, at the Portland waterfront. Central Catholic was just one of the schools that sent student volunteers out to cook, prepare, dish, and serve food. Interact club’s co-president Rachel Gerber, junior, plated the food during the event. “I like how direct the contact is,” Gerber said. “You’re there [and] you’re just doing something good. It’s simple, it’s easy, you can feel good about it.”](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/interact-1-edited-1200x744.jpg)
![At the bottom of the third inning, the Lions are still scoreless. Rowe stands at home plate, preparing to bat, while Vandenbrink stands off to the side as the next batter up. Despite having the bases loaded, the team was unable to score any runs. “It’s just the beginning of the season. We’re just going to be playing out best by June, [and] that’s where champions are,” Rowe said.](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IMG_3077-1200x900.jpg)
*WEB CONTINUATION: This article originally appeared in Volume 105 Issue 2 of our news magazine the Amplifier.
For West Linn residents, the new Trader Joe’s on Mcloughlin Blvd. has been a hit, as the closest location used to be in Portland or Tigard.
Early in December, the store opened next to Walmart. Statistica ranked Trader Joe’s as one of the most popular grocery store chains in the country, with 70% of people surveyed ranking it favorably, and 13% of people aged 18-29 shopping at Trader Joe’s.
Sepi Tajipour is manager at the new location.
“We have what we call [a] ‘My first Jobber’ program. We hire teenagers as we like to show them the way of the workforce,” Tajipour said. “Everything from customer experience to working on a product team to time management, from going from nothing to another, doing cart runs, doing some cleaning, and stocking shelves,” said Tajipour. “[I] love the people. I love our customers. I love our crew that works here. We have a lot of fun with both, working with our crew and helping our customers. And then, of course, I love the food. I love our products. We have the best products, I think. I shop here myself.”
Trader Joe’s offers a variety of food. Although they offer a smaller number of products compared to most big chain grocers, they still carry a multitude of snacks and essentials like canned goods, vegetables, and meat.
“We have some wonderful snacks, salty ones, sweet ones. We have samples around the store, which are very enjoyable and fun to try,” Tajipour said. “We have a lot of easy, quick-to-make meals. We got things you can put in the air fryer, things you put in the oven, we got things you can just open in a bag, we have great packaging that you look at and you want to eat it as well.”
Trader Joe’s stores have a mascot that is voted on for each new store. Those who came in during the first few weeks of the store’s opening voted on which creature would be the store’s mascot.
“We had the kids come in for an entire week and vote between three mascots, three that could have been our mascot. One was the blue heron, one was a goose, and one was an otter. And when we did the voting, all three of those are also in the murals that are up around the store,” Tajipour said. “And out of the three by a landslide, the otter was picked and born, coming in second place was the goose, and in third place was the heron.”
Those who wish to apply to work at the store can do so in the careers section of the Trader Joe’s website.
