Local teen lands unique internship

PRIEST RIVER — With interests in English, journalism, business management and restaurants, it is a unique opportunity that Jillian Stevens landed an internship with all of those components rolled into one.

Stevens, who graduated from Priest River Lamanna High School last month, began her internship with Jeremiah Higgins, who also happens to be a PRLHS graduate, in April. While she started as a business operations intern for his restaurant business, HJL Hospitality, she is now doing radio spots on The Jeremiah Show, helping with playlists for songs, editing biographies, and doing pre-interviews for guests of the show.

“It is really exciting,” Stevens said, adding that talking with the guests can also be a bit nerve wracking. “Of course, the guests he has on there are not just people you talk to — I’m from Priest River. I am from such a small town and they are people who are all famous. I am not talking to just anybody.”

Nevertheless, she said, despite the fact that she was only 17 when she started, Higgins put his trust in her to talk with people and make those connections, which she said will benefit her in the future when she goes to work for Higgins full-time after college.

Her first spot on the radio show was on April 15, just a couple weeks after starting the internship. During the episode, Stevens gave a little bit of history about Priest River, such as why the town was once referred to as “Little Italy” during the arrival of Italians starting in 1892, as well as the impact of the timber industry on the area.

“I thought she did a great job representing Priest River,” Higgins said.

Stevens laughed as she told the story about how she was in school when she was scheduled to do the interview and had to get out of class. The next day, she was called out during an assembly, where it was announced to the entire school about the podcast and her internship with Higgins. Stevens said she wasn’t expecting that, as she is not too keen on having so much attention drawn to her.

“So I was just standing there like a deer in the headlights,” she said, adding that she was surprised how many people at the school listened to the radio show. “It was a lot of fun, though. I liked that episode.”

Stevens is doing weekly spots on the show and she said Higgins wants her to come down and do one in person soon, so she and her mom are planning a trip.

Higgins, who graduated from PRLHS in 1989, has known Stevens’ family since high school, as he went to school with her aunts and knows her grandmother as well. Because of her interest in the restaurant business, Stevens’ mom sent Higgins a text one day, asking him to give her some advice. He immediately responded and asked Stevens to call him, which turned into a two-hour conversation. He soon sent her an iPad Pro and got her set up as an intern where she started out observing meetings on Facetime.

“Then I just started giving her stuff to do, like booking guests on the show and helping with various things like that,” Higgins said.

Stevens is heading to Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston in the fall, where she will be in the career-technical education program for business management and marketing.

Stevens said she once wanted to be a chef, and while that changed, she still wants to open restaurants someday. She plans to go to California and work with and learn all she can from Higgins after college before moving back to North Idaho. She wants to open a restaurant in Coeur d’Alene because, in spending a day there with her mom recently, she fell in love with the downtown area.

“You have the newer buildings, then you have the old rustic buildings … I could do something here for sure,” she said.

She also ultimately hopes to open a restaurant in her hometown of Priest River, and has already been eyeing some of the downtown buildings there as well.

With Higgins’ experience in the restaurant industry, he is the ideal mentor for Stevens as she works toward her dreams.

Through HJL Hospitality, Higgins helps people open restaurants and has built 200 brand name concepts all over the world, he said. After graduating from PRLHS, he moved to Santa Barbara where he worked in the restaurant business for a time before deciding to go to film school. He then worked in film until Hollywood went on strike for about eight months and he needed to pay the bills

“Producing is what I was doing, and writing, and so I ended up never going back — and now I open restaurants for people,” Higgins said.

Higgins has worked with a number of top name celebrities. He assisted in developing the concept for Mick Fleetwood’s restaurant, Fleetwood’s on Front Street in Lahaina on Maui. He led the team that opened the restaurant in 2012. He ultimately became a business partner in the restaurant with the legendary rock drummer from Fleetwood Mac, along with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Sammy Hagar of Van Halen. Fleetwood’s on Front Street has sales of about $10 million annually, Higgins said.

That partnership is what led him to start The Jeremiah Show.

“I never really looked back at film, and I really love radio,” Higgins said. “I started doing the radio about six years ago because I loved hearing people’s stories. It started out as a hospitality show, and I do that all day long, so I got bored with that really quick and I just started interviewing interesting people.”

He has done about 240 shows in six years, he said, broadcasted from the Santa Barbara News Press - New York Times studio. The podcast is featured on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Spreaker, and Radio Nation.

After working with Stevens for a few months now, Higgins couldn’t say enough about how impressed he has been with the teen.

“She has accomplished so much and seems so driven … I think she is going to go on to do good things,” he said.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.