POCATELLO — Kim Shurtliff spent her last week at LA Semiconductor not on the clean room floor she’d come to love, but at home in the April sunshine, halfheartedly updating her resume and trying not to think too hard about what comes next.

“It’s been the best job I’ve ever had,” she said. “I’ve met the best people — family-oriented people, everybody so respectful of everybody. It’s like a big family.”

For Shurtliff, that is not just a figure of speech. Over the past year, she worked alongside her son Tyler, her youngest son Kadien, Tyler’s wife Sarah, and Sarah’s sister and her husband. Sarah’s father retired from the plant, too.

Friday is Shurtliff’s last day.

She is among the first wave of LA Semiconductor employees to be laid off as the plant’s court-ordered receivership process reaches its deadline.

April 10 — the date that has loomed over Pocatello’s semiconductor workforce for months — is here. A second round of layoffs is expected around May 1, affecting the remaining staff, including Tyler and many of the plant’s managers, Shurtliff said.

Pocatello Mayor Mark Dahlquist confirmed the two-phase timeline during a Wednesday interview with the Idaho State Journal, noting that written notices have already gone out to employees.

“There are still some prospects looking, and that was still going on as of last check,” Dahlquist said. “But this whole receivership process has tight deadlines, and they’re coming to the very end.”

A long road to this momentThe story of LA Semiconductor’s unraveling stretches back to December 2024, when Semiconductor Components Industries — the global chipmaker now known as Onsemi — filed suit against LA Semiconductor and its founder, Mike Ward, alleging breach of contract, fraud, and financial misrepresentation. Onsemi had sold the Pocatello wafer fabrication facility to LA Semiconductor in October 2022 for $80 million, only to claim the company quickly became insolvent and defaulted on multiple agreements.

A federal judge in Ohio appointed FTI Consulting as receiver within days of the lawsuit being filed, granting the firm control of the plant and its assets. FTI, with Managing Director Carl Jenkins maintaining an extensive on-site presence in Pocatello, took over day-to-day operations. Onsemi bankrolled the plant’s survival throughout the receivership. Court records show it provided more than $40.6 million in funding to keep the facility running

In August 2025, FTI retained San Diego-based Macquarie Semiconductor & Technology Inc. as a remarketing agent to find a buyer. Macquarie set a sealed-bid deadline, later extended to Jan. 16, 2026. Bids were received, but whether any resulted in a transaction has never been publicly confirmed.

A settlement agreement was filed in federal court in February, but its terms remain sealed. The fate of the plant — and of its roughly 342 workers — has been an open question ever since.

All hands on deck

Throughout the process, local officials worked to attract a buyer, even as legal constraints limited what they could say or do publicly. Dahlquist said he has visited the plant, met repeatedly with the plant manager and human resources staff, and stayed in close contact with FTI Consulting. He has also been coordinating with Idaho Commerce Department Director Tom Kealey on a package of state tax relief incentives that remain available to any prospective buyer.

But the receivership process, Dahlquist said, has kept the city largely on the sidelines.

“They’ve got very tight reins on the whole bidding and the whole sale process,” Dahlquist said. “The city has been offering lots of support, but there’s a lot of internal process that they have for the sale.”

Dahlquist pushed back firmly on any suggestion that the plant’s struggles reflect poorly on Pocatello as a place to do business — a narrative he said is both unfair and inaccurate.

“This receivership started because of alleged breaches of contract between two companies,” he said. “It does not have anything to do with Pocatello, Idaho, being a bad place to do business. That’s the furthest thing from the truth.”

Dahlquist also addressed a concern circulating in the community — that the plant’s equipment may be too specialized or outdated to attract a buyer. He said he asked the plant manager directly.

“I was told the equipment has several, several years of life left,” he said. “It’s not reached the end of its life.”

He noted the plant’s focus on custom-made circuits and chips may limit its appeal to a broad market, but he declined to overstate his technical knowledge on that point.

Fingers crossed

At home Thursday, Shurtliff said she has not given up hope. She texted Tyler in the morning to ask if he had heard anything. He had not, but said talks with new investors were still ongoing.

She described her final weeks on the job inventorying the plant’s assets, including empty office spaces that were once used by onsemi staff. She was tasked with counting desks, monitors, whiteboards, conference tables, heavy equipment and office chairs — cataloging everything that might eventually be sold. The scale of what she saw left an impression.

“It would be such a shame for it to just sit,” she said. “I know it could be something huge. It’s such a clean area — I’m just shocked it hasn’t been purchased by now. It’s a beautiful building, and it’s so huge.”

Dahlquist echoed her sentiment, ticking off the plant’s assets: large, modern clean rooms, water, power, and strong infrastructure across more than 554,000 square feet of building space — a facility located at 2300 Buckskin Road in Pocatello that has produced semiconductor wafers in some form since 1970.

“Something will happen with this plant,” he said. “It’s too bad that deadlines are there, and as of today they’re not met. But even if this falls out of the receivership process, we are sure going to keep trying. It is an absolute top priority.”

Remaining as optimistic as possible, Dahlquist added, “The sun is going to come up Monday morning, and we’re just going to trudge ahead.”

Shurtliff, for her part, is not quite ready to say goodbye.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” she said. “But I’ll be rooting for them. I’ll be rooting for everyone who is still or has worked at LA Semiconductor.”

Co-general manager of LA Semiconductor Pat Sedlmayer did not return multiple requests for comment for this article. FTI Consulting Managing Director Carl Jenkins declined to comment when contacted.