(April 4, 2006) — Irondequoit native Crystal Prince didn't think she'd be able to get a job in Rochester, so she took a job in the public affairs department at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

Three years later, the 2003 Ithaca College graduate is back home, working as an account executive on the Xerox Corp. business for Text 100 Public Relations in the High Falls area of Rochester.

"I thought the opportunities would be limited (in Rochester), but that's not the case," said Prince, 25.

Prince is among 22 people who work on high-tech accounts at Text 100. The London-based firm opened a Rochester satellite office nine years ago with two people serving the Xerox account. Now the local office has grown into a full-fledged PR agency with diverse accounts ranging from Sprint to Motorola, said Erin Humphrey, vice president of Text 100's Rochester office.

"It's big-city PR with the white picket fence," said Humphrey, 34. "People come to us because of experience and not where we're located."

Another public relations agency is also tapping into the emergence of technology firms in the Rochester area. Ricochet officially opened this month in Henrietta in the Winton Place plaza.

Company founder and Chief Executive Todd Aydelotte, 39, considered Boston and Washington, D.C., to expand his Manhattan-based business. But the Pittsford native decided to open another public relations shop in his hometown.

"I look at Rochester as a community filled with vibrant life sciences and technology companies," Aydelotte said, pointing to the University of Rochester and his first local client, UR spinoff Logical Images, a small Henrietta company that has developed software to allow disease diagnosis using detailed medical images.

University of Rochester graduate Abhishek Basu, 24, runs Ricochet's Rochester office with two full-time and three part-time staffers. Basu was a neuroscience major but decided to "use my technology background in a different way," the New Jersey native said.

Public relations firms such as Ricochet and Text 100 are hiring young people well-versed in technology, they say.

The average age of employees at Text 100 is 27, Humphrey said. Many are from local schools such as Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher, she said.

"I'd like to think we're doing our part to help the Rochester economy," Humphrey said.

Text 100 was recently named public relations agency of the year by The Holmes Report, a trade publications for the public relations industry.

Fisher graduate Krista Denecke, 29, was thrilled to be able to find a job in Rochester.

"I wanted to find a place where I could find enough opportunity to keep me here," she said.

Hiring public relations professionals has become a popular advertising strategy for companies, said Rudy Pugliese, a Rochester Institute of Technology professor who designed the school's advertising and public relations degree program, which was launched last fall.

By hiring a public relations agency, a company does not have to pay to keep someone on staff, he said.

While there are no guarantees when it comes to media placement, if a story does appear about the company, "the effects of public relations are more long-term than advertising," he said.