CCC Workers Thrive on Tough Training : California Conservation Corps an Open-Air Course in Job Skills

The labor is backbreaking, the hours long, the pay minimal and the working conditions miserable.

One worker calls it a curse and compares it to a prison sentence. Yet, he re-enlisted for a second year.

“I made a bet with my father that I could survive a two-year sentence . . .,” said 19-year-old Raymond Reinagel, adding that if he wins, he gets to live with his dad.

This is today’s California Conservation Corps, a state-funded work program for young adults ages 18 to 23. The program, modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s national Civilian Conservation Corps of more than half a century ago, was created on July 8, 1976, by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. It employs men and women to work on natural resource conservation and emergency-related projects.

“Our mission is to promote our youth, provide them with skills while enhancing our natural resources,” said Tom Miller, administrator of the Escondido camp, one of 15 around the state.

The Cs (pronounced “sees”), as it is fondly referred to by members, employs 2,250 young adults, 127 of whom are housed two to a room at the center here. The center also oversees 15 corps members who live at home and report to the CCC satellite office in downtown San Diego.

“The work tends to tear up your body,” Reinagel said, complaining of back and shoulder problems. But he added that it’s an investment of sorts toward picking up skills necessary for a better job.

Reinagel and his co-workers begin their work day at 5:45 a.m. with mandatory calisthenics, running and weight training. No-shows can be docked a day’s wages.

Afterwards, members clean up their rooms--a job not taken lightly because if they fail to pass room inspection they again jeopardize that day’s pay.

After breakfast, members fix their lunch and load up work tools in order to arrive at the work site before 8 a.m.

In the corps, men and women work side by side on various public environmental projects, whether it’s landscaping neighborhood parks, restoring historic sites, struggling up steep hillsides to plant seedlings, or weatherizing buildings to conserve energy. Corps members also battle fires, fill sandbags in floods, and help in search and rescue efforts after earthquakes.

“The National Guard provides the same kind of service as we do, but they have other jobs to go to and can’t stay on some of the lengthier emergencies,” Miller said.

“Our projects benefit the public as well as provide hands-on skills-training for the youth,” he said.

After working an eight-hour day, members return to the center for dinner and various structured nighttime activities, such as classes towards a high school diploma; reading, writing and arithmetic classes, and lectures on such topics as job hunting by guest speakers from the community .

“There’s very little reward or recognition for corps members,” Miller said. Members make about $581 a month, from which $145 is deducted for room and board; a one-time $50 fee is charged for boots and uniforms.

“The people that know us know us as a well-trained, energetic work force that you can count on in a minute,” Miller said.

The Escondido Center serves Imperial, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. Corps members go through three weeks of intensive training in the handling of work tools at a CCC training facility in Calavaras County before they report to the centers. Workers are arbitrarily assigned to a center but can put in for transfers at any time.

The crews at the Escondido Center helped build and continue to help maintain the Australian Rain Forest at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and cut and clear new riding and hiking trails in Poway, among other projects.

“We try to give them things to do that are exciting, and not save all the dirty work and trash things for them,” said Jim Gibbons, San Diego Wild Animal Park horticulturist.

“With the help of CCC, we’ve been able to do things we wouldn’t normally do because of lack of funding,” Gibbons said. The animal park reciprocates by doing some landscaping at the 440-acre county-owned Escondido Center. The center here is currently training a fire crew to help battle fires in the height of the county’s fire season. And CCC work crews help Caltrans clear brush along the highways and maintain roads.

In such marriages between the Cs and another organization, the organization provides the technical expertise and meals for the crew and the Cs provides the labor, Miller said.

The Cs also have been instrumental in planting trees around the Ramona Community Center and building and installing 300 barn owl nest boxes in cooperation with the Ramona-Julian Resource Conservation District, according to Pat Burke, district conservationist for the federal Soil Conservation Service, which provided the technical advice.

“It’s an outstanding agency because the kids don’t lollygag around . . . they’re dedicated people who are conscientious about their work,” Burke said.

Poway Deputy Mayor Mary Shepardson said CCC members, who “rarely get the recognition they deserve, have been extremely good workers, often working in hot weather and rugged terrain . . . It looks as if they are determined to make something of themselves.”

Miller stressed that the corps is a work program. Those currently on parole or probation are not qualified, and once in, they are subject to termination for abuse of any of the five basic rules: consumption of alcohol, use of drugs, refusal to work, fighting or destruction of state property.

So why do young adults sign away a year of their lives in order to serve their “sentence”?

For Reinagel, it was for a roof over his head, a place to sleep, and food in his stomach after he lost his construction job in a work-related accident and was kicked out of the house when the paychecks stopped coming in.

“If not for the Cs, I would probably be out on the streets making trouble or in a drug rehabilitation center,” Reinagel said.

For former Oklahoma resident Mallory Crowe, 19, it was a job opportunity for someone with a tarnished record. Crowe entered the Cs after getting out of military prison, where he served a sentence for assaulting an Army officer.

For 18-year-old Glenn Anderson, who was living on the streets and playing at being a “beach bum,” enrolling in the Cs last November gave him a sense of purpose.

“I’ve been a screwball most of my life,” said the sun-bleached Anderson, noting that he quit military school before he could be kicked out. “I never could really stick to one thing,” he said.

Anderson, who is training for the fire crew, is now a self-proclaimed workaholic in the CCC.

Corps life isn’t without its grievances. Members complain that the 11 p.m. lights-out curfew is too early, the food’s nothing to brag about and the camp is too isolated from town. But they acknowledge that they can’t live any cheaper elsewhere.

Miller said the rules are enforced so that when members leave, they will have acquired good work ethics and potential employers can be assured they’re getting quality people.

“Almost without exception, they are an asset,” said Don Steele, grounds and maintenance manager at Balboa Park, where a number of former corps members are employed. “They come out of the corps knowing how to be punctual, with work skills. . . . I’m very much impressed with the program.”