There will be no politicians cutting ribbons to celebrate the region's newest call center and the 100 jobs that it is bringing -- jobs that start at $9 an hour with a 401(k) retirement plan plus dental and medical benefits.

There will be no grand ceremony because part of the call center already is open, up the hill from Second Avenue in a second-floor office that Danielle Hopkins, 37, has set up at her house in Hazelwood. While she is taking calls for ExpressJet in the afternoons, her daughters are downstairs doing their homework and putting the finishing touches on dinner.

Another ExpressJet agent, Barbara Williams, 48, has a nearby desk -- down the hill and across the railroad tracks. She likes to get her errands done before sitting down to work.

They both work for Alpine Access, which has 7,500 home-based agents who operate as the call centers for Office Depot, ExpressJet, J. Crew and even the Internal Revenue Service.

The company is looking for another 100 agents in the region. To work for Alpine Access someone needs to be able to set up an office-like situation at their home. That means there can't be children interrupting telephone calls or dogs barking in the background. They also need to provide high-speed Internet access, a telephone line and a headset.

Christopher M. Carrington, the president of Denver-based Alpine Access, is one of the company's 100 employees who has to go to an actual office, the only one the company has.

The company started in Colorado, but now has agents all across the country. The advantage to working that way is the company can hire people from all of the nation's time zones to provide 24-hour coverage. And, by extending its employee base to the entire nation, the company can provide some very specific talents, such as when one of its clients needed 25 bilingual customer service agents. The two languages needed were English and Mandarin Chinese.

In any one location, he said, "that would be difficult to find." It was possible for Alpine Access to staff that call line by drawing from people across the country.

The ability to work from home gives Ms. Hopkins the flexibility to take care of her children as a single mother and earn a paycheck.

She gets her children off to school in the mornings, finishes chores and errands, starts dinner and is on the phone as a reservation agent at noon. During her lunch break at 2:30 p.m. she picks up her 4-year-old daughter from pre-school and sets her up with activities and coloring to keep her busy until her older daughters, who are 16 and 12, get home from school.

"She understands that mommy's working," Ms. Hopkins said.

And despite working alone, she said, it's not lonely because she is in touch with other agents who are handling the same account.

When she logs on, she joins the instant messaging system where her co-workers can say hello. When she has a question she can send out a message while still on the call and receive instant feedback from other agents

The company also has started a social network on which employees can post wedding pictures and update each other about their personal lives.

Mr. Carrington said he has seen agents become good friends through the system.

The company's business model also allows people who normally could not work to get back into the work force.

Matthew Harris, 38, of Bastrop, Texas, has a degenerative disc disorder that has left him unable to stand for very long and unable to function in a normal office environment. Sometimes the only relief he can get from his back pain is to lie on the floor with his feet elevated. That's why working from home fits his needs. "I can take a break and lay down on the floor," he said.

Mr. Harris and his wife have five children between them ranging in age from 9 to 21. Three are still in school.

His work for Alpine Access allows him to earn money for his family six to eight hours a day while taking care of his own health issues. He recently trained a team to take calls for Office Depot.

Ms. Williams in Hazelwood has been able to be active in her community and help her grown daughter while working for Alpine Access for the past six months. She found the company by searching the Internet for a situation in which she could work from home, but that was not a scam.

Mr. Harris in Texas said his family was skeptical about his online job for months and kept asking him if he were still getting paid.

Mr. Carrington said the company has received 210,000 applications in the last year. It hired 3,000 people across the country last year and expects to expand by hiring 4,000 employees next year.

To apply for a job go to www.alpineaccess.com.