Veteran 13-Year-Old Baby Sitter Earns Advanced Credentials

At age 13, Peggy Converse of La Habra, a three-year-veteran baby sitter, has some new and imposing credentials on her ability to care for children--and demand more money for doing it.

“I got a lot of training at home because I have a 2-year-old brother,” said the Imperial Junior High student who just completed a Red Cross-certified baby-sitting course, “but the course taught us a lot about what kids like to do at different ages and ways to keep them entertained.”

“Many of the baby sitters,” said Yvonne Lopez, who conducted the baby-sitting class for 25 teen-agers at La Habra Comunity Hospital, “not only had doubts about their abilities but also didn’t understand their role once the parents left.”

Equally disconcerting, Lopez said, was the fact that “most of them didn’t know what the going rate was for baby sitting. They felt adults should tell them.”

Now that they are armed with added skills, such as selecting appropriate games and toys, with knowledge of feeding, accident prevention and emergency procedures, and with increased understanding of children, “we tell them they should negotiate the price,” Lopez said.

Each of the baby sitters, all of ages 12 through 15, paid $5 to take the six-hour course. Peggy, who plans to be a gynecologist, said the instruction not only gave her and the others a chance to do a better job, “but we learned what some of the dangers are in a house such as chemicals used for washing.” In addition, the hospital placed their names on a list of certified sitters.

At the final session, the baby sitters said the highlights of the class were their newfound confidence in emergency procedures and increased understanding of children. In addition, they all had business on their minds.

Lopez said $1.50 an hour plus 50 cents for each additional child was an honorable fee, “but the children should learn to negotiate.”

Carol Kulok, 41, of Cypress, who gave up cigarettes in the Great American Smokeout after smoking for 27 years, has completed her second week without smoking.

Bridegroom George A. Alberson, 27, of Tustin, said it was a typical wedding setting with flowers, champagne, minister and immediate family members. And in the midst of it all was his mother, Oma Alberson, propped up in bed at Placentia-Linda Community Hospital, trying to recover from a broken hip she suffered soon after arriving in Tustin.

“We (with fiancee Karen Walls, 28, of Fullerton) had to find a way for mother to see the wedding,” he said, noting that his parents had flown from New Mexico. “So with the hospital helping us by setting up an altar with a candelabra, decorating the room with flowers and providing a champagne toast, we held the wedding there. At least the first one.”

The bridegroom’s mother, clearly elated about the hospital wedding, said, “I didn’t want to miss this one. He’s the oldest and last of my three children to get married.”

Then everyone, except the groom’s mother, moved on to Alta Vista Country Club where the wedding ceremony was repeated.

Minister Frank Gray put it into perspective. “We just tied a double knot,” he said.

There has always been the notion, said Dale Bonifield, a spokesman for the Santa Ana chapter of the American Heart Assn., that a lot of heart attack victims died on Monday, “but we didn’t know it was that pronounced.”

Bonifield said a newly published, long-term survey of heart attack victims among executives shows that 75% of those who died at work died on a Monday. And of those who died at home, according to the Blue Cross-Blue Shield study, 50% also died on a Monday.

The major factor, said the survey, was “the Monday blues,” associated with returning to work after an exhausting weekend.

Bonifield said a survey of blue-collar workers’ heart-attack deaths is likely to be conducted soon.

Kenneth R. Lorge of Placentia may have good cause to remember his 42nd birthday.

A group of his staffers at Placentia’s Rio Vista Elementary School, where he is principal, gave him a present of 42 lottery tickets.

After four $2 winners and one $5 winner, Lorge scraped off a $100 prize, making his name eligible for the Lottery’s Big Spin drawing.

Acknowledgments--South Coast Chapter member Connie Clevenger of San Clemente was named first winner of the American Business Women’s Assn.’s Associate of the Year award.