It takes a small town like Selah to offer a family-owned, customer-driven business.

Michael Reese prefers it this way. Reese owns Sentinel Computers, which offers one-on-one computer repair services to businesses and home PC users.

“It’s an all-in-one computer store,” Reese said. “Anybody out there, I’m here to help their business,” Reese said.

Even people that don’t know exactly what they need can come by for his guidance, he noted.

“If you don’t know where to start looking, I’ll help you do that,” he said, including finding specific software.

Reese said most of the problems he encounters are virus-related, something most people can understand in an ever-growing online world.   

Reese said he doesn’t carry a lot of items in his store, which is located at 316 S. First Street in Selah. Instead, he does a lot of the work in customer’s homes, or they drop off their computers for him to fix.

Sentinel Computers has been open in Selah for about a year now, but Reese ran the store in Yakima for several years before moving it to his hometown.

Reese said the move has worked out very well.

“We’re staying busy enough, growing slow. We don’t want to grow too fast,” he said.

Reese said there are still peaks and valleys with work coming in. Sometimes three or four people come in all at once needing help, and at other times several days go by without him seeing a single customer.

He said many people from the Yakima area make up his clientele. Reese works on PCs, not Macs.

Sentinel Computers is the first real computer shop in Selah, even though Reese said there are several independent computer repairmen in the area doing work from home.

Reese said what he enjoys most out of his job is the variety.

“There’s such a big variety of things to deal with,” he said. “It keeps me busy––keeps me active.”

Reese said with the nature of his business, things are constantly changing, which makes things more exciting since he has to be keeping himself up to date with the latest technology and repair issues.

“You gotta keep learning,” he said.

Reese began his formal training in the mid-1990s at Perry Technical Institute in Yakima, just when the Internet began to boom.

He graduated from the telecommunications program there in 1996.   

Before opening Sentinel Computers, Reese worked at several computer shops around the Yakima area, and at Providence Hospital—now Regional—for more than four years.

The Reeses have been Selah residents since 1999. Reese was born in Yakima and served in the Marine Corps for four years, and was honorably discharged in 1987.

Shannon Reese came from a military family and was born in England before moving to Alaska, and eventually to this area.

The two met in 1994 and were married in 2000, and have three children together.

Reese, 43, has made this a family business. Shannon does all of the office work and anything else that needs to be done other than computer repair.

“We’re family-owned, so we try to have a personal touch for [the shop],” Shannon said.

Sentinel Computers is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Saturday. For more information, call 698-3204.