Carlene Whitt had it all figured out.

After graduating from Morehead State University, the Clark County native was going to be a teacher.

She taught her first year at Conkwright and her second at Bryan Station Senior High in Lexington. Then, she was done.

“I thought I’d be a teacher my whole life,” Whitt said. “I had a vision that everyone came in ready to learn. When I started at Bryan Station, it was a time of transition when they brought the security in.”

When her vision did not match the reality, Whitt found another avenue doing regulatory work for the government, first at Bluegrass Station and then with the Internal Revenue Service.

“I had never really thought about public health,” Whitt said. “At the IRS, I did regulatory work in the enforcement area. This is regulatory work.”

Whitt started at the Clark County Health Department in 1992 as the second environmentalist. Less than a year later, she became the supervisor after her boss left.

After 27 years, Whitt decided it is time to retire.

Being an environmentalist at the health department covers a wide array of responsibilities from inspecting restaurants to teaching food handling classes, inspecting hotels, to conducting investigations into rabies cases and spraying to prevent mosquitoes. Then there’s testing for lead and radon and responding to all manner of complaints.

Saying no two days are the same is almost an understatement.

“I’m in and out all the time,” she said. “It’s an interesting job. I can say I’ve loved almost every minute of the job. There’s a variety of jobs. I’m not chained to a desk, and there is an opportunity to learn something new.

“There’s not a day that works out the way I planned it.”

Whitt majored in biology, so she had some of the background for working public health and with animal complaints. No one told her, though, about having to take animal heads to the state lab to be tested for rabies.

“That’s where my degree in biology really helped out,” she said. “I’d dissected all kinds of animals. The icky part wasn’t an issue until it was in my car.

“I remember the first time I transported a dog’s head to the state lab for rabies testing. It was weird thinking about a dog head in the back seat.”

The other unknown part of the job was the sheer number of complaints people make to the health department about a variety of issues. The vast majority of those, she said, turn out to be false.

“I was shocked about the number of complaints that are not legitimate, “she said. “A large percentage are revenge for some affront they received.”

The frustrating part, she said, is having to tell people she can’t help fix a situation.

“For me, the hardest part is having people call in with an issue, but I have no laws to back me up, and I can’t help them,” she said. “No one takes up some of these issues. I’ve had people have an issue, and it’s a civil matter. Sometimes the only way is to hire an attorney and go to court.

“I like to solve problems. When I can’t do that, it’s hard to tell them.”

After all those good days and long hours at work, Whitt’s last day will be July 31. At this point, she plans to travel and stay active.

She said she would miss the daily interaction with a wide variety of people and being out in the community as much.

“That’s going to be a challenge after my retirement,” she said. “I’m not going to sequester myself at home. I’ll volunteer or maybe work part-time.”