Alex Bambino, 21, is the son of two educators. He’s busy working, welding a piece of material that will be used on a heavily armored military vehicle when finished. Despite two college-educated parents, who teach at the local Cambrian County schools, he wanted nothing to do with college following high school.

“I like working with my hands, being part of making something that is important, and I had no interest in starting my adult life in debt,” he said.

So he went to Greater Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Career and Technology Center, and he became so good at what he did that he was recognized at the SkillsUSA championship as a national competitor. He found work in his hometown at JWF Defense Systems, located in the old Bethlehem Steel plant along the Conemaugh River. And he became part of something bigger than himself in the machines he helped make.

Bambino is just the kind of young person Mike Rowe has been talking about for the past few years in his tireless effort to inspire young people to consider a different path after high school.

For 16 years, Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs,” has highlighted the purpose, skills and importance of the everyman. He has run a foundation that draws attention to the need our workforce has, and which our educators lack, in encouraging young people to look to the trades to keep our roads, bridges, cars and national security humming.

Rowe, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, said he started the mikeroweWORKS Foundation in 2008 in large part because of the country’s workforce shortage in skilled labor and trade jobs.

Rowe said what they do at mikeroweWORKS is offer work ethic scholarships to men and women who want to “learn a skill that’s in demand” and work.

The current scholarship cycle launched on Feb. 12. To earn the scholarship, applicants need to enroll in an approved program, sign the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, answer four questions about the S.W.E.A.T. (Skill & Work Ethic Aren’t Taboo) Pledge, make a video, have two solid references from a teacher or boss, and verify school costs by April 17.

Rowe, fresh off the blunt and inspiring talk he gave at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, said young people like Bambino are exactly why he does what he does with his foundation, especially in light of the fact that the national deficit in skilled artisans affects national security.

Rowe said that for the first time in all the years he has been doing this, he is seeing real enthusiasm around the trades.

Rowe stressed that young people like Bambino are needed desperately to maintain and build our maritime industrial base.

Here in Johnstown at JWF Defense Systems, Rowe would find his mecca — there are scores of young people straight out of trade school or high school as part of the two-year, pay-while-you-work apprenticeship training.

The backdrop here would make Rowe’s heart sing. Here they were, inside a massive steel mill that not that long ago was occupied by the skilled tradesmen who built this country, made a decent living and even helped supply materials to keep our country safe during conflicts.

In a way, Bambino is doing the same thing under the same roof. There are military Humvees in the assembly line here, along with other more sensitive things we were unable to discuss. And if Rowe gets his way, with a little help, he becomes not unlike George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”: a man who has had an effect far beyond what he’ll ever fully realize.