Feature Profile

Call Me Rocket

The apartment is small, but quaint. The tour took all of two minutes to see the living room, kitchen and bedroom. Perched on the couch was a cat she called Jackson. Pictures lined the wall filled with WSU football players, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand who captain the Time Bandit from the Deadliest Catch, and plenty of other friends having a good time with the one they call Rocket.

Rocket is what her friends fondly call her, but Katharina Cooper, 45, found a fuel to power her rocket personality that would lead her down a road she said she never imagined. She earned her GED at the age of 16 to move to Seattle to work with bands as their fan clubs’ president. Now she has found herself living in Pullman and has been completely drug and alcohol free for almost five months.

Originally from Colfax, Cooper found herself going toward a career working with bands like Poison, until the Alaskan Pipeline days brought a new adventure for her.

“Poison was one of the bigger bands I worked with,” said Cooper. “We lived in this warehouse in Los Angeles, Calif. while they were recording their first album ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In’.

“I don’t tell many people this but I let a friend talk me into moving to Alaska and working as a go-go dancer,” said Cooper. “Poison had signed with Enigma Records so they didn’t need my help anymore. So I left for Alaska.

“In my first three weeks as a dancer I made over $9,000 all in cash. When I told this to the members of Poison, they told me to stay where the money was instead of going on the road with them.”

Dancing had consequences for Cooper. She said she couldn’t take the stage without drinking, which was how it was for most of the dancers.

“We’d sneak bottles in when we had to dance and that has been my down fall,” she said. “I was drinking and doing coke while dancing. People would tip with slips of coke. I’d dance for maybe three months of the year, and then just take the rest of the time off partying and selling coke on the side to make some extra money.”

After seeing many friends die from the drugs she used to share with them, Cooper said she quit the drugs, but couldn’t stay away from the booze. She said her first experience with alcohol was when she was 14. According to www.abovetheinfluence.com, 40 percent of people who drink before the age of 15 are more likely to become alcoholics.

Cooper said she had gone to outpatient counseling multiple times when they were court mandated after receiving two DWI’s in Alaska and one in Pullman. This was the first time she said that she truly wanted to quit drinking and gets her life on track.

“I always said I’d live to be 88-years-old,” said Cooper. “The first 44 years were a roller coaster. I mean it’s amazing that I don’t have AIDs or any disease. The next 44 are going to be a new time for me to go back to school, find a life partner and settling down.

“I went from working with rock stars and being famous in my dancing days to working a grocery store and trying to rediscover my roots near my hometown.”

Tami Baump, a co-worker of Cooper’s who met when they lived in Alaska and have both relocated to the lower 48 have remained close friends through all of the struggles Cooper has encountered.

“I was skeptic when Rocket told me she was going to rehab only because she has tried to quit so many times,” said Baump. “But now that she has quit and proved herself I support her so much more.

Baump said she has been with Cooper through the thick and thin and that now she has quit, knows there will be a long road of success ahead of her.

“To know her is to love her,” said Baump. “You can’t not have fun with her. She’s a good person who would give anyone the shirt off her back.

“What could have been horribly done to a person has been done to her, but she just keeps a smile on her face and keeps on trucking.”