It would take an event of catastrophic proportions to wipe the smile off Sharon Sharpe’s face these days.

Since March, she’s occupied a second floor office in the Admiralty Head Lighthouse in Coupeville, which comes with a window view of ship traffic in North Puget Sound passing through Admiralty Inlet.

It’s one of the perks of being the new program specialist at the lighthouse, which is part of Fort Casey State Park.

“It’s hard to have a bad day here,” she said.

Sharpe is settling into her new position and trying to contain her excitement.

An outdoors enthusiast, she calls what she does with Washington State Parks a dream job.

“I’m trying hard to hold myself back,” Sharpe said. “I’ve got a lot of ideas I want to incorporate.”

Her current project is building the number of volunteer docents who work in the lighthouse’s museum and interpretive center. She’d like to see the current base of roughly 20 volunteers double in size.

Part of her job is manage the lighthouse’s interpretive staff, along with coordinating tours and events within the park and at the lighthouse, including weddings.

One ambitious fundraising event she has planned for 2015 will take place in October when Fort Casey will play the starring role in a haunted house for two weekends.

Plans for the “Haunted Fort” include an evening hayride from the lighthouse to the old Switchboard chamber, where guests will be allowed to enter.

“It’s not going to take much to make it a haunted space,” said Sharpe, who attended sixth grade camp at nearby Camp Casey and remembers some eerie moments at the fort as a child, then later returned as a camp counselor. “It’s scary enough for kids in the dark.”

Although a committee continues to work out details, current plans are to run the event Oct. 16-17 and Oct. 23-24.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be too big,” Sharpe said with a smile.

Sharpe also is making plans for National Lighthouse Day in August. Fort Casey will celebrate that event on Saturday, Aug. 8, a day after the traditional date. Live music will be provided.

Sharpe commutes from LaConner for her job but has no complaints.

She gets to work inside a picturesque century-old, Spanish-style Whidbey Island icon that is often portrayed in photographs and paintings and once even appeared on a postage stamp.

“My responsibility is to care for it,” Sharpe said. “It needed some TLC.”

Sharpe worked as an office assistant at a state parks regional office in Burlington prior to coming to Coupeville and has worked in office settings at the Port of Edmonds, LaConner Marina and Sedro-Woolley School District in the past.

The lighthouse job gives her the flexibility to be where she loves to be most often — outdoors.

“This fits me very well,” Sharpe said. “This is where I want to be.

“I was trying to work myself into the outdoors world. This is a dream job for me.”

The lighthouse was formerly managed by Washington State University’s Island County Extension but management switched to state parks over the winter.

Sharpe was hired just in time for spring when things start heating up at the park.

“Promoting the park and what we have to offer is what I’m all about,” Sharpe said.

Want to be a docent?

Admiralty Head Lighthouse in Coupeville is looking for Washington State Parks docents interested in volunteering at the lighthouse.

Lighthouse docents help in a variety of ways depending on their interests from greeting visitors, sharing history, giving tours or working in the gift shop.

The lighthouse is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Shifts are typically about three hours.

For more information, contact Sharon Sharpe at 360-678-1186 or sharon.sharpe@parks.wa.gov