Marcia Blaszak began her National Park Service Career in the Western Regional Office in San Francisco in 1968 as a clerk-typist. Throughout her 39 year career she served in a variety of positions and locations to include administrative positions at Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. She was budget officer at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and administrative officer at Yellowstone National Park (NP), Shenandoah NP, and Lassen Volcano NP. Indeed she was the first woman administrative officer at Yellowstone. Former Shenandoah Superintendent Bill Wade called Blaszak the best administrative officer he had ever worked with.
Following the restructuring of the National Park Service in the mid-1990s Blaszak moved to Alaska Region. In 1994 she became the associate regional director for administration and later served as the superintendent of the Alaska Support Office. In 2001, she assumed the position of deputy regional director for the Alaska Region. In 2004 Interior Secretary Gale Norton promoted Blaszak into the position of regional director for Alaska. She served in that position until her retirement in 2008.
By this time, she had also worked her way up through the various levels of incident management to become a fully qualified Finance Section Chief. During her career, she served as a team leader for the administrative payment teams and as the finance section chief for the first NPS All Risk Type I Incident Management Team. She served in that position during a number of major events, to include work in Yellowstone NP during the 1988 fires and during the response to Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992. According to the late Rick Gale, NPS Chief of Fire and Aviation and the Incident Commander of the team on which Marcia Blaszak served in Florida, she was the best Finance Section Chief with whom he had had the privilege to serve. She distinguished herself during the Hurricane Andrew event, where Gale jokingly summarized, “Marcia, we gave you unlimited authority and you exceeded it!” Blaszak received the Department of the Interior (DOI) Meritorious Service Award in 1998 and the DOI Distinguished Service Award upon her retirement.