As most in West Seattle know, the totem pole from Rotary Viewpoint was stolen last November, recovered, repaired, restored, reinstalled, and will be re-dedicated Aug. 10. And while South Dakotan Native artist Robin Young originally carved the pole about 35 years ago, it took a lot of behind-the-scenes expertise to reinvigorate the pole, to bring the pole back as close as possible to Young's original vision.

Peter Lane grew up in West Seattle and lives near the Alaska Junction, and is the operations manager for Artech Fine Art Services in Seattle, the firm that restored the totem pole. Artech does installations, transportation, art logistics, framing, storage, and import and export of artwork.

"We saw that the pole had been stolen and contacted the Rotary and talked to them about this being a perfect opportunity to restore it," said Lane, 40. "Being deinstalled (removed) when it's not in the public is the time to do work on it. We gave them a bid. I guess they negotiated with the court system and the guy who stole it. We basically worked with the Rotary and Seattle Parks Department."

Charles Edward Jenks, 70, reportedly a well-to-do West Seattleite had a towing crew unbolt and crane-lift the 500-pound, 18-feet-long totem pole, then drive it away to Keizer, Oregon, near Salem, where it was found, with another pole stolen from Renton, in a boat trailer in a senior center parking lot. Jenks was not charged, but instead paid over $20,000 in a plea agreement, and the money went toward the restoration. (There are recent reports that Jenks had an unknowing accomplice call Pete's Towing to remove the pole, and they called Seattle police to block off the streets so it could tow the truck.)

"When we fumigated the pole, we took it to an operation in SODO with a (sealed) chamber where they pumped in gas for three days. Since it had been outside for a long time it had termites, bugs, all kinds of beetles, and it couldn't come into our facility like that."

"There was still a bunch of rot on the pole that we fixed with resin epoxy," he said. "We painted the motifs back to the original (design) and put on an oil stain, then reinstalled it." That was on July 28.

"Roger Waterhouse, our project manager, did a lot of research and worked with Phil Roach and Shawn Nordfors," said Lane of his colleagues. "The artist, Robin Young, had repainted the pole several times. You could tell in our shop from the different colors. We did research to get the colors of original pole. It's now in way better shape (than when it was stolen.)

"I had a lot of personal pride in this project, especially being a West Seattleite," said Lane, whose wife, Ellen Wilcox also grew up in West Seattle. They have a 10 month-old son, Elias, and a a three year-old daughter, Jo.

"It's an interesting story, and the pole is an icon of West Seattle," said Lane. "I drive by the pole three times a week. I always loved the location of it, seeing it while coming down 35th (Avenue) and the city is right behind it."

The interesting story is one of many in Lane's interesting profession. He said it is commonplace for the firm to handle and transport multi-million dollar works of art.

"There are a number of our collectors here in town with impressive pieces that people don't know about," Lane pointed out. "There are art objects that come through that I never thought that I'd ever see that I learned about in college, like daVinci, Monet." He has a degree in sculpture from Western Washington University.

"It's under the radar of most people and the owners don't want the general public to know when things move, because that's when there's risk."