L.A. Conservation Corps’ Hard-Work Ethic

Perhaps the last place Armando Rubio’s buddies would expect to find him is cleaning a sidewalk. But Rubio’s pals driving by the intersection of 30th and Main recently could have seen him, shovel in hand, scooping up trash.

Rubio describes himself as an 18-year-old resident of Lincoln Heights on probation for using PCP, a former gang member who quit after being wounded in a drive-by shooting, a former high school student who was expelled for truancy in the 11th grade and attended continuation school but never finished high school, the unmarried, proud father of a 1-year-old daughter, and a man who just got his “first real job.”

He owes that job to a new organization: the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, which opened for business recently in a dilapidated old firehouse at 2824 S. Main St.

Rubio, who wants to finish high school while in the corps and become a forest ranger, is among the first 27 corps members. Plans call for 80 to 100 members by early next year.

The corps seeks to improve the employability of men and women between 18 and 23, while simultaneously completing conservation and community service projects.

The Los Angeles Conservation Corps is the latest addition to a national trend. There are 40 youth-oriented conservation corps in the country, according to Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit corporation that designs, manages and evaluates programs intended to help people--especially young people--to be more productive in the labor market.

Of the 40 corps, California boasts six: the California Conservation Corps, about 2,000 members; the East Bay Conservation Corps headquartered in Oakland, about 80 members; the Marin Conservation Corps in Marin County, about 50 members; the Sacramento Local Conservation Corps, about 50 members; the San Francisco Conservation Corps, about 85 members and the new Los Angeles corps.

(The members of the California Conservation Corps, created in 1976, fight fires, plant trees, clear brush, repair trails and render aid in natural disasters.)

Los Angeles corps members learn skills ranging from getting to work on time through balancing checkbooks to wielding hoes, axes and chain saws. They are encouraged to further their educations with an eye toward gainful employment. After a year, they are expected to have learned enough work skills to move on to a private sector job.

Regina Sims, 21, lives in Inglewood. A graduate of Jefferson High School, with a semester’s college credit, Sims has spent six months behind the counter in a Winchell’s Donut House and a year in the California Conservation Corps. “I joined the Los Angeles corps for experience in landscaping, and to learn to be a chain-saw specialist,” said the young woman, who wants to get a landscape maintenance job when her year is up in the Los Angeles corps.

Road to Employment

Ramon Pena Jr., 23, lives in East Los Angeles. He is a high school graduate who has worked in a car wash and as a warehouseman. He’s looking at the corps as a road to employment in a parks and recreation department.

Latanya Burley, 18, lives in the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts. She quit Jordan High during her senior year, is going to night school to get her diploma and sees her income from the corps as an essential step toward an immediate goal: “I’m trying to get out of my mother’s house,” Burley said. She wants to be a nurse.

Corps members earn the minimum wage, $3.35 an hour. Some of that money comes from contracts with entities for which the corps works. But it costs the corps about $10 an hour for every member. Of this year’s $1.1 million budget, $481,000 has been contributed by the California Conservation Corps. Private corporations have given about $45,000, and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has given another $100,000, of which about three-quarters is designated to pay for work to be done in the mountains.

The corps’ first work project is its own house: the fire station for which the city exacts a rent of $1 a year--a sum that seems about right considering the condition of the building.

Toward a Better Home

With a little help from its friend, the California Conservation Corps, which painted two-thirds of the firehouse as a moving-in present, the Los Angeles corps is scrubbing and glazing, painting and sweeping and shoveling its way toward a better home.

It also painted the building that houses a pleating company next door and, for the price of the paint, will do the same for other neighbors.

Corps projects extend all over greater Los Angeles. For the coming year they include working on firebreaks in city parks, clearing trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, landscaping and working on animal enclosures in the City Zoo and landscaping city parks.

About half of the corps members undertaking those projects will be women. There is one Indian, an Anglo, and the rest are about evenly divided between blacks and Latinos.

The mix could be better, said Martha Diepenbrock, 32, the Los Angeles corps’ director and a veteran of seven years’ staff work in the California Conservation Corps.

“We want to get more Asians and whites,” Diepenbrock said. “Ideally, we’d like about 20% white, 28% black, 8% Asian, 43% Hispanic and 1% other ethnic groups like Native Americans. That mix would reflect a weighted combination of the general population and the unemployed workers in the area where we’re located.”

Days Start Fast

Corps members’ days start with half an hour of calisthenics and running. Then they split into crews of 8 or 10, climb into vans and drive to their projects.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings are devoted to classes on the history and culture of Southern California, and on career development. Skills as basic as how one conducts oneself at interviews and how to fill out job applications comprise the career development classes.

However, the most important job-related skills will be learned in the field. And those skills won’t specifically involve work like clearing trails and pulling weeds, although there will be plenty of that kind of labor.

Diepenbrock said her supervisors and crew leaders will spend a lot of time teaching corps members the importance of qualities like loyalty and dependability.

“Most employers are looking for dependability, punctuality, the ability to work with others and for a supervisor. A lot of corps members don’t come to us with those qualities, so we will work hard to teach their importance,” Diepenbrock said. “They are hard-to-find qualities, and in many ways more important than specific job skills. . . . Employers figure that anyone they hire with such qualities can learn the specific skills needed for a job.

Focusing on Aspirations

“We will work individually with corps members to help them focus on what their aspirations are. We will then show them what educational requirements those jobs have, and we will help them find various night classes and encourage them to attend.

“As people approach their last three months in the program they can use Tuesday and Thursday mornings for looking for jobs. We will help them find possible jobs, and our board of directors also is going to help identify employers.

“Raising more funds is a big concern,” Diepenbrock said. Her immediate goal is to support the corps with state grants, contract income and private grants in about equal amounts.

Within a couple of years she expects to branch into entrepreneurial ventures. “We’re considering providing fire reduction services for homeowners by clearing weeds, and perhaps setting up delivery services for private businesses,” she said. “Corps graduates would do the work, and the corps would provide administrative direction.

“Within a decade I hope to have entrepreneurial work as a major source of funding. Of course, that’s a long way off. But I expect the corps will be around for a long time.”