COL Alex Dornstauder receives a two star from COL David Turk (left)

For three-and-a-half months, the U.S. Army Reservist was Los Angeles District Commander, a rare posting for a non-Regular Army officer. “What’s significant about this is that the Corps of Engineers is an important unit,” Turk explains. “For a reservist to command it is pretty much unheard of.”

The enviable assignment unfolded when the previous commander, COL Richard Thompson, deployed to Baghdad in June. His replacement, COL Alex Dornstauder, wasn’t scheduled to arrive from Iraq until the end of September. Who could fill the gap? South Pacific Division Commander BG Joseph Schroedel, Division Deputy Commander COL Joseph Flor and COL Thompson himself all turned their eyes toward Turk.

Clearly, they liked what they saw.

“I simply had confidence in his abilities and felt the District would respond to his leadership,” BG Schroedel explains. “I had no reservations about his competence, knowledge of the issues and people (in the Division and sponsors), or in his ability to act independently and produce results.”

Echoed COL Flor: “BG Schroedel gets the credit for having the wisdom to select Dave. For my part, I can only say that I would have done the same, in BG Schroedel’s shoes, for a lot of reasons. The top two would be courage and the ability to communicate. Dave demonstrated the courage in dealing with the District’s customers in a straightforward manner and in his willingness to ask the District’s team members the difficult questions.

“Dave also has the ability to listen, digest complex situations and issue simple directives. Given these traits, he is able to sort through the unfamiliar and the difficult issues a District Engineer typically faces in the course of a day.”

Turk, who pinned on his second Meritorious Service Award in early October just before heading off to Stuttgart, Germany, for his next assignment, was no stranger to the District. Since 1991, he’s worn more hats than Minnie Pearl, serving as deputy chief of operations in the Emergency Ops Center, a program manager for PPMD, a program manager on an L.A. Unified School project and other troubleshooting jobs.

Calling his selection “a strong statement by the Corps of Engineers,” Turk said it also “sent a message out to the Reserve community: ‘We are one Army.’ They could have brought in somebody else. Given the opportunity, the general didn’t shy away from it.”

Turk’s background made the choice a no-brainer for his superiors. The East Coast native has extensive engineering experience as both a civilian and as a military officer. Throughout the ‘80s, for example, he worked for several Fortune 1,000 firms, and he came back to the District two years ago as a green-suiter after a tour as Corps liaison to the European Command in Germany.

His term as commander originally was to last only five weeks, but it wound up taking nearly five times that long. Besides the hundreds of day-to-day missions worked by the District’s 707 team members (excluding contractors), the end of the fiscal year was bearing down. That deadline pressure added even more urgency to get things done on time and on budget.

But the full-bird temp wasn’t worried. “I knew I had a very professional staff and organization to work with,” he explains. “I knew I’d have their support. The key was that I understood the directives coming down from headquarters and SPD, especially at year-end.”

One immediate problem was to upgrade the District’s recruiting center program, which Turk called “less than stellar” when he took command. But within three weeks, he recalls, Real Estate Division team members had elevated its status to “gold,” a superior ranking reached for only the second time in District history.

Other achievements he’s proud to have been part of:

--The District got a “100% Award” for its work on the Davis-Monthan AFB apron expansion in Arizona;

--Resource Management moved from a “Red” rating into “Green” in a very short time;

--Planning Division’s impressive work on the Matilija Dam removal project “has international implications,” Turk says.

--And in his typical team-first approach, Turk praises several other branches and divisions “since I don’t want to leave anybody out.”

After Los Angeles, Turk was preparing to return to Europe for the eighth time, where he would become watch officer in the Joint Operations Center of the European Command at Stuttgart. “I’ll be operational, not an engineer,” he notes. The tour could last anywhere between six months and two years and will be unaccompanied.

And if past is prologue, don’t think you’ve seen the last of COL Turk shouldering his silver war eagles down the corridors of the Wilshire high-rise. “COL Dornstauder and Brian Moore both offered to take me back after that tour,” he says. “That would be a nice job.”

You might even say a plum.