Working Family’s Pumps Fueled Her Ambition
Little wonder if dinner discussion at the Noel home in Escondido is shop talk about the price of gasoline.
Chip Noel has been a Chevron dealer for 15 years, on Carmel Mountain Road in Rancho Penasquitos. Wife Connie helps with the books. And last week, their 21-year-old daughter, Tina, took over her own dealership on West Bernardo Drive in Rancho Bernardo.
Chevron regional executives in San Diego say it may be unique within the company: two separate dealerships, operated by father and daughter.
The Noels’ two older sons each began working at dad’s station pumping gas at age 12; today, one is in the Navy and the other is a computer technician. Neither wants to follow in dad’s footsteps. And Chip said he didn’t want his three daughters in the business. Tina’s the oldest.
“It’s greasy and dirty and hard,” Chip said. But when he expanded his station a couple of years ago, he hired Tina, then 19, to manage the computerized cashier’s booth. Not only did she learn the art of hiring and firing as well as how to handle the books, but she also got--at her insistence--some training in auto mechanics.
Chevron officials were aware of Tina’s growing expertise, and when a not-so-successful Chevron station on West Bernardo Drive in Rancho Bernardo became available, they asked if Tina was interested.
“I said sure, and laughed,” she said. “I thought they were kidding.” They weren’t; she contemplated the offer, took out a $40,000 loan (compared to the $1,300 it cost her dad to open his dealership in 1971), signed the lease, hired three employees, renovated the station--which had been dormant for nine months--and opened it last Tuesday.
She has expanded the hours to take advantage of the flow of three shifts of workers who swarm to the Rancho Bernardo industrial park.
“I enjoy the challenge of being on my own, and of realizing that this is my only source of income and that I’ve got to make it or else,” she said. “My biggest fear is that I’ll let everyone down.”
She says she has something to prove as well. “All my high school friends looked down on me when I started working for my dad. They thought, heck, she just works at a gas station. They never saw that it was a lot more than that. And now that I’ve got my own station, I’ve got something to show them.”
Meanwhile, 16-year-old Joy Noel is working at dad’s station. “She’s the best employee I’ve got, and Tina can’t have her,” Chip said.
Bar Bellies Up Abroad
Every once in a while the law firm of Duke, Gerstel, Shearer and Bregante likes to get together for a good time. There’s the Christmas party, the once-a-year collective birthday party and softball game, and the annual trek to the races at Del Mar.
This week, 65 of them--the 19 staff attorneys, other staff members and spouses--are going to a pub.
In London.
Nice party, eh?
The firm can afford it, given that it won a $36.5-million class-action lawsuit this past spring against the builder of a Tierrasanta condominium project, according to partner Bryan Gerstel.
“I had always told myself that if I ever hit one beyond my reasonable expectations, we’d celebrate. Since my favorite pub is in London, that’s where we’ll go. We’re taking just about everybody.”
He even invited the opposing lawyers and the judge--but they declined.
The group leaves today.
Timely Praise
Our finest city scored a hat trick in the current issue of Time magazine, making three appearances in its pages. Some are more prominent than others.
Perhaps the least relevant was the religion page article about a weeklong, rousing rally by feisty Roman Catholic students. The story began, “In the Italian seaside resort city of Rimini, 600,000 youths, sporting San Diego Chargers T-shirts, designer jeans and plain work clothes, poured down Via della Fiera.”
There was no further mention of the Chargers.
But two pages later was a glowing review of San Diego theater by Time’s Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, William A. Henry III.
He lauded the Old Globe for its theatrical and financial success and the La Jolla Playhouse for its guts--and he squeezed in a nice mention of the San Diego Repertory.
“San Diego is not what most people, even most San Diegans, think of as an artsy town,” Henry’s article began. “It is celebrated for sun and surf and margaritas, for driving with the top down and perpetual pursuit of youth.”
Sun, surf and the pursuit of youth? As if to reinforce Henry’s observation, Time editors printed in the same issue a letter to the editor by Dave Gomez, writing on behalf of the Ocean Beach Geriatric Surf Club & Precision Marching Surfboard Drill Team (and Gidget Patrol):
“Just because we’ve entertained countless thousands with our parade-concert-video performances and thrilled untold severals with our gnarly surfing is no reason to lay the blame (for the new surfing craze) at our sand-splattered door. We continue to offer refuge to over-the-hill (30 years-plus) surfers who might otherwise fall victim to gainful employment.”
