Hawaii DC Associate Celebrates 55 Years With Exchange—And Plans to Keep Going

Lurline Mau-Saloricman had 37 years of Exchange experience when she retired from the Hawaii Distribution Center in 2005.

Then she came back.

Since her return in 2008, the Hawaii DC logistics assistant has added 18 more years of service. In March, Mau-Saloricman and her DC teammates celebrated her 55 years of service with the Exchange.

She has no plans to retire.

“I cannot handle doing nothing,” she said. “I’m a workaholic, and when I did try to retire, I thought, ‘Maybe there’s something better out there.’ But there wasn’t, so I just continue working.”

Mau-Saloricman’s Exchange story starts in 1968. She was looking for a job when a friend told her about the Exchange. She had no military background and wasn’t familiar with the organization, but she did have retail experience. She applied and was hired as a sales associate at the Fort Shafter Exchange.

“It was convenient for where I was living and I had children to support, so they come first in my life,” she said. “Then AAFES sort of took over after that. I’d worked for Sears and Holiday Mart, and I didn’t think military customers were different from other customers.

As comfortable as she was around customers, however, Mau-Saloricman wanted to have a job that was a little more casual.

“I’ve been a tomboy all my life,” she said. “Working in a retail store, you had to dress like a lady. But T-shirt and blue jeans was No. 1 in my eyes.”

In 1986, she switched to what was then the Hawaii Area Exchange Depot, where she was warehouse worker foreman.

From 1986 to 2005, Mau-Saloricman worked at warehouses in Hawaii, except for a brief period in 1989 when she worked as an assistant retail manager on Johnston Island, a tiny speck in Johnston Atoll, roughly 825 miles southwest of Hawaii (the Exchange operated a PX there from about 1948 to 2003).

“I liked it there,” she said. “But I had a brother living there. So I knew he was going to take care of me. Even though I didn’t need him to, because I know how to handle people.”

After about six months on Johnston Island, Mau-Saloricman returned to Hawaii, and was there when the Hawaii DC opened in 1993. She spent most of her remaining time there as a warehouse foreman, but was temporary DC manager for a few weeks in March and April 2005.

She retired in 2005 to take care of her ailing husband. After he passed away, she found she couldn’t stay away from the Exchange and returned in 2008. Throughout her career, she has earned nearly 40 awards and letters of appreciation.

Michelle Madden, a financial accounting supervisor at the DC, says she has worked with Mau-Saloricman about five years and enjoys hearing her stories.

“A lot of them are about how she was one of the guys,” Madden said. “She would jump on that forklift, buckle up and go. She put merchandise away, she moved pallets, she unloaded containers when nobody else was around. She was helping with everything. Even now, she still has that spunky, fiery, foreman attitude sometimes.”

This time, Mau-Saloricman plans to stick around.

“I love coming to work every day, you know, doing my job, working with the people, have a little fun,” she said. “We kid around, but that’s what makes the working condition better. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve still got a lot of mileage left in me.”