Las Vegas has never been a city that sits still, and for nearly four decades, Pacific Electric Inc has been wiring it.
But when Pauline Gaumond talks about the company she and her husband have built, she doesn’t begin with how many years they’ve been in business or how many jobs they’ve completed. She talks about people.
Since the company officially began doing business under the Pacific Electric Inc name 18 years ago- carrying forward decades of experience as a family owned business – the valley has transformed around it.
Neighborhoods have spread into the desert. The skyline has exploded. Master-planned communities have risen where there was once open land. Casinos became resorts, and Las Vegas grew from a place millions of people visited into a place millions of people now call home.
Through all that change, the people behind Pacific Electric Inc have been here, working behind the walls, above the ceilings and inside the electrical systems that make a growing city possible.
Pauline was kind enough to invite us in for a visit, and as we approached the building, my first thought was how relatively unassuming it is. There is no monument to nearly four decades of work, no grand corporate headquarters proclaiming how long this company’s roots have been planted in Las Vegas.
But as we stepped inside, the feeling is almost the opposite of what you might expect for an operation as big and busy as Pacific Electric Inc. The office is calm, organized, comfortable. There is an easy familiarity among the people working there, the kind you can’t manufacture.
And sitting right there in the front office is Jean-Guy Gaumond. Not tucked away behind a suite of executive doors. Not separated from the everyday activity of the business. One of the company’s owners is right there, in the middle of it. It’s small detail, but small details have a way of telling you a lot about a business.
Walking into Pauline’s office, you begin to understand just how much history is contained inside this relatively quiet building. Her walls are filled with photographs of projects Pacific Electric has completed over the years. Taken together, they could almost serve as a trophy wall, a visual record of the company’s fingerprints across a city that has spent nearly 40 years reinventing itself.
But the most interesting thing isn’t what’s hanging on Pauline’s walls, it’s what she’s doing underneath them.
She’s reading Google reviews.
Not someone in a marketing department. Not an outside public-relations company. Pauline. She reads them herself, every one, and she responds. Again, it’s a small detail. But it says a lot- it’s the daily work of their mission and values: customer satisfaction, integrity, quality workmanship, innovation and community engagement.
When someone takes the time to write about one of their technicians, Pauline wants to know what they said, and she wants that customer to know somebody at the company heard them. It’s a very real and personal expression of the values that guide the company.
Their vision isn’t simply to grow, it’s to set a standard for electrical service in the Las Vegas Valley. But excellence here isn’t something reserved for a mission statement on the wall, it’s something practiced in every small, ordinary moment of running the business. Jean-Guy sitting in the front office. Pauline reading the reviews. People answering the phone. Technicians showing up at someone’s home and understanding that the person behind the front door matters just as much as the electrical problem behind the wall.
Call the company and you begin to understand it. There is a familiarity to the experience that can feel surprisingly rare in an age of automated phone trees and anonymous customer-service departments.
This kind of consistency doesn’t happen by accident, it comes from a company culture where employees are treated as something more important than labor- they’re family. Pauline used that word herself, and after spending some time here, you understand what she means. It’s not the polished corporate version of “we’re all family here”, it’s the familiarity of people who know one another, work alongside one another and take pride in what the person next to them is doing.
And that family extends beyond the walls of the company.
Community engagement is one of the company’s core values, and the company supports organizations including the Blind Center of Nevada, along with veterans, first responders and law enforcement.
While we’re talking with Pauline, Operations Manager Lincoln Allen happens to pass by and Pauline cheerfully waves him in. “Tell them about your Braille!”, and suddenly we’re hearing another story. Lincoln has earned Library of Congress Braille certification, allowing him to transcribe, proofread and translate printed materials into high-quality Braille. It’s a skill that connects directly with work Pacific Electric has done with the Blind Center of Nevada. That’s something different from simply writing a check to support a community organization, it’s literally hands-on. And that tells you something about how this local electrical company moves through the community, beyond electrical panels, wiring and service calls.
For a company that has spent decades helping power a growing city, being connected to the people who live in that city seems almost inevitable, because despite its size, Las Vegas is still a city built on relationships. The employee who answers the phone, the technician who remembers the house, the business owner who calls a customer back, the employer who knows the people working out in the field, the local company that doesn’t disappear when the job is finished. Those things don’t show up on an electrical schematic, but they’re the things Pacific Electric Inc has built its reputation on, and may be part of the secret to lasting in a city famous for reinvention.
The Valley will keep growing. Technology will keep changing. Homes will become smarter. Electrical systems will become more complicated. And another generation of families will settle into neighborhoods that haven’t even been built yet.
But some fundamentals remain stubbornly old-fashioned. Know your craft. Answer the phone. Do what you say you’re going to do. Take care of your people. Treat your customers like they matter.
For nearly four decades, they’ve helped wire the Valley as it grew from the Las Vegas of 1986 into the community millions of us call home today. But perhaps the better measure of what Jean-Guy and Pauline Gaumond have built is the people they’ve built it with- a family of people taking pride in doing things right while helping power the homes, businesses and communities that Las Vegas families call their own.
After nearly 40 years, that’s the real power behind this company, and there’s still plenty of spark left.
