Teal began his working career when he joined the US Air Force in 1978.  He specialized in heating and cooling systems.  His Air Force career ended in 1988.  

After returning home, he began working for Terminal Ice which later became Americold Logistics.  He worked his way up from loading trucks to maintenance engineer and eventually to the facility service manager.  When he left Americold after 27 1/2 years, he was the FSM over two plants in Burlington WA and Lynden WA.  

After leaving Americold, he took a job with Trident Seafoods as a PSM coordinator working in remote Alaska out on the Aleutian chain of islands.  In August of 2018 he was diagnosed with bladder cancer and had to make a trip home every three months in order to have treatments for his cancer.  In March of 2021 he was declared cancer free after over two years of treatments. He worked up in Alaska for four years until finally April of 2021 when he decided to come back down to Washington State where he landed a job with Darigold in Seattle.

Unfortunately he was never able to start the job with Darigold because he was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 urothelial cancer in May 2021.  This has really hit him hard because he has never been one to call in sick or miss work for any reason unless he wasn’t able to work, and that has almost never happened.  

He has always been the bread winner for the family and never complained about it.  He supported his wife Maggie and three beautiful children until they grew wings and left the nest. Two of his kids have followed in their father’s footsteps by joining the military, except they went US Navy instead.  

This diagnosis has left him unable to work and he has had to file for Social Security disability.  The process however will take several months to get approved so he and Maggie are currently living off of what savings they have.