by: Tucker Sanders P.L.S.

I was born and raised in Atascadero, CA where I grew up playing baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, and tennis while squeezing in fishing when I could.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where my father was a Land Surveyor, so I was exposed to the profession at a young age.  I helped a couple days off and on during summers growing up mostly running a star drill for nails and tags.  I have fond memories of the crew seeing how many pieces of rebar they could sneak into the lath bag every time I set it down before I noticed.

My first real job was working at Tackle Warehouse in San Luis Obispo due to my love of fishing.  I really had no plans to go into the Land Surveying profession and was initially interested in pursuing a degree in hatchery management. I ended up deciding to give Land Surveying a shot as I enjoyed the outdoors so much and always excelled at math.

I visited Fresno State my senior year of high school and decided to enroll in the Geomatics Engineering program after a great tour with Dr. Crossfield.

I enrolled at Fresno State starting in the Fall of 2008 and graduated in the Spring of 2012 with my Bachelor of Science in Geomatics Engineering.

During my time at Fresno State, I played for the Fresno State Rugby team from 2008 to 2009.  I worked as an equipment manager for the Geomatics Engineering Program where I oversaw weekly maintenance and cleaning of the survey equipment as well as setting up and networking computers for our computer lab. I was also a president of the Student Association of Geomatics Engineering at Fresno State.  I was also an inductee into Lambda Sigma, the honors society for Geomatics Engineering at Fresno State.

I was lucky enough to have a paid internship with the Bureau of Land Management out of the Paso Robles Field office during summers while going to Fresno State.  We worked predominantly on a project in the hills outside of Solvang but were also lucky enough to do a bit of work on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.  Working for the BLM gave me a truly great foundation on the principles of Cadastral Land Surveying.

Out of college I worked for a company based out of Madera, CA called Bedrock Engineering.  I was very fortunate for all the surveyors I was able to work with here and the knowledge they passed down. I spent 2 years almost exclusively in the field working on anything and everything.

After a couple of years of working full-time in the Central Valley I came to the conclusion that I wanted to move back to the Central Coast.  I was approached by Vollbrecht Surveys out of San Luis Obispo in early 2014 and took the opportunity to move back to my hometown.  One of the more unique opportunities I had while working for Vollbrecht Surveys was to build 3d airspace models of airport layout plans for the airports the company was specializing in at the time.

In January of 2015 I made the move to North Coast Engineering, Inc. where I was lucky enough to work under my dad for the remainder of his carreer.  During my time at North Coast Engineering, Inc. I have progressed my way from Survey Technician to my current position of Principal Land Surveyor which I officially took over for my dad when he retired in January of 2021. I am currently licensed in CA, ID, AZ and am hoping to add a couple more adjacent states as well as pursue my cFedS in the next couple years.

I consider myself very fortunate to be able to live and pursue a career in the beautiful Central Coast and make a conscious effort to never take that for granted.