{"id":25094,"date":"2024-10-31T18:31:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T00:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/president-of-dolores-state-bank-retires-after-42-years\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:09:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:09:56","slug":"president-of-dolores-state-bank-retires-after-42-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/president-of-dolores-state-bank-retires-after-42-years\/","title":{"rendered":"President of Dolores State Bank retires after 42 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"From
From left to right: Former Dolores State Bank President Douglas Aiken, new Vice President Shawna Valdez and new President Larry Engel. (Courtesy Shawna Valdez)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

After 42 years at the Dolores State Bank, Douglas Aiken retired Sept. 27.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not bummed. I\u2019m happy about it, I\u2019m ready. I think there\u2019s a time when everyone needs to step away,\u201d Aiken said.<\/p>\n

In 1981, he got his start in banking at First National Bank.<\/p>\n

By August 1982, he was working at the Dolores State Bank, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.<\/p>\n

That same year, Toto released their hit song \u201cAfrica,\u201d Michael Jordan started playing professional basketball, and \u201cE.T.\u201d hit the big screen.<\/p>\n

And in banking, everything was paper-based.<\/p>\n

\u201cChecks, deposits. The only electronic transactions I can even think of, and they weren\u2019t even electronic actually, would be a wire from bank to bank. We would call another bank and initiate the wire,\u201d Aiken said.<\/p>\n

The bank\u2019s only computer was \u201ctaller than I am,\u201d said Aiken. \u201cIt was about the size of a gun safe, a tall gun safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, nonlocal checks were flown to the Federal Reserve in Denver, and they\u2019d bring our checks back here, Aiken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a time when the plane crashed. Fortunately, they were checks coming to us, but the banks that had accepted them for deposit had to recreate them as best they could,\u201d Aiken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology has changed banking a lot, and it\u2019s been good. It\u2019s taken the plane crash example out of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the changes, the bank\u2019s commitment to customer service has remained steadfast, Aiken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the technology has changed the way we deliver the services to the customer, we still strive to give them the best customer experience that we can,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s been very important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larry Engel, the new president of Dolores State Bank, agreed, and added how the new technologies in banking \u201cprovides customers a way to interact with us that they couldn\u2019t before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people don\u2019t ever come to the bank, because they don\u2019t need to,\u201d said Engel. \u201cThey have a debit card, an ATM card, they can do remote deposits. They can do all those things, they don\u2019t ever have to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we also want them to have the option to come here if they need to,\u201d said the bank\u2019s new vice president, Shawna Valdez.<\/p>\n

Or to have the option to call me directly, and get a call back if I miss it, Aiken said.<\/p>\n

Aiken is still on the bank\u2019s board of directors, so he\u2019s in once a week at those meetings or special occasions, like \u201cwhen a reporter comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s confident in the exchange of powers, with Engel as president.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarry\u2019s grandfather was one of the original directors of the bank, so it\u2019s still kind of in the family,\u201d Aiken said.<\/p>\n

Engel himself has been in banking for more than 30 years; 20 have been at the Dolores State Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked across the hall from Doug now for close to 20 years and so I think I have a pretty good idea of how he did things,\u201d said Engel. \u201cAnd, as he said, customer service is where we try to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, we are trying to keep up with technology and making sure we have products and services that customers want and value,\u201d Engel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times it\u2019s more about improving; technology helps us improve a service we already offer,\u201d Valdez added.<\/p>\n

Soon, the bank intends to reopen its location across the street from Cliffrose between Cortez and Manco, but not for public use.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be an operations center for bank employees doing work behind the scenes like double-checking mobile deposits, things like that, Valdez said.<\/p>\n

Back at the bank, the transition has been \u201cseamless\u201d and things will keep progressing along.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always enjoy listening to people who have been in banking for a long time talk about changes. It\u2019s like Doug said, the changes come all the time,\u201d said Valdez. \u201cA lot of what I\u2019ve heard when we announced Doug\u2019s retirement is, \u2018Well how are things going to change?\u2019 Well, what people don\u2019t realize is they\u2019re changing all the time, every day, so that\u2019s going to stay the same.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

is taking Douglas Aiken\u2019s place as president of the bank <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78796,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25094\/revisions\/78796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25094"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}