Living On East Coast Time : Early to Bed and Early to Rise Gives These Orange County Professionals an Edge on the Action 3,000 Miles Away

It’s 5 a.m. and Tom Keim of Mission Viejo is making good time on the Santa Ana Freeway, passing the Crystal Cathedral in the eerie glow of early morning.

By the time Keim reaches his office in Los Angeles at 5:40 a.m., Walter J. Keating in Lemon Heights has finished shaving and has turned his attention to early financial reports. After leaving Fairhaven Estates in near darkness, he pulls his Porsche 928 into the parking space at Orange’s Paine Webber office shortly after 6.

While most Southern Californians are still snug in their beds, a small flock of early birds is stationed at computer terminals, telephones and assorted work stations before dawn each day--cranking out orders and reports, with one ear tuned to the tempo of the East Coast and another to the time zone of the West.

With customers, company headquarters and co-workers three time zones away, hundreds of western workers are up by 4 a.m., out of the house by 5 and at the office by 6 to conduct business with East Coast callers. Conference calls may begin by 7, lunch is taken at 10 or 11 and by 2 p.m., briefcases are loaded up and heading for home, where they may be replaced by golf bags or other tools of leisure time.

Among the groggy legions are stockbrokers, bankers, theater directors, airline personnel, publishers and members of the news media who live in the West but whose lives are dictated by the East. And for many, Eastern rhythms rule their private as well as their professional lives.

“Most of our friends know we’re early,” says Arlen Crouch of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith in Irvine. “If there’s a party, they know we’re heading out early. And they don’t call late at night.”

As regional director of the brokerage firm, Crouch is up by 5:15 a.m. and at the office by 6:30 when the New York Stock Exchange opens. And Crouch’s wife, Derrel, is also on Eastern time when she gets up before 6 to help her husband get ready for work.

Crouch’s colleague in the world of high finance, Walter Keating at Paine Webber, is on the same schedule.

Keating is up by 4:45 a.m., or 4 if he has to work in Los Angeles that day. After rising he works out with weights, then reads newspapers as he cools down. Leaving the hills of Lemon Heights about 6:15 for the 15-minute drive to his office on the 10th floor of the Tishman Building in Orange high above the sleeping masses, Keating is ready to begin his job as vice president of marketing by 6:30. In the hushed hallways and dimmed lights of dawn, Keating’s first calls are to the East because, he says, New Yorkers are expecting early action.

“New Yorkers are very provincial,” says Keating, who is wearing a conservative gray suit and red striped tie. “Remember that New Yorker cover with New York huge and everything west of the Hudson tiny? Well, that is how they look at the world. They think nothing of saying something needs attention by noon their time. So you call a customer out here and say, ‘It has to be done by 9,’ and he says, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”

Keating isn’t alone in viewing New Yorkers as merciless time chauvinists. Professionals in the West often must bow to the ways of the East.

“You have to adjust to their habits,” says Maura Eggan, marketing director of South Coast Plaza. “In New York, they go to lunch later; so you have the morning to call them. I make a lot of my calls before coming to the office. . . . But you also have to be aware that in the summer, New Yorkers work a four-day week.”

Despite the drawbacks, most of those on East Coast time seem to like it. Joe Brunansky, businessman and sports manager, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I think it’s the way to go,” says the strapping ex-baseball player with the easy smile. “In college I never got up before 10 or 11, but now I like the early life. It gives me a lot more time. During the summer I can play golf every day, and that’s what I do.”

Brunansky also has time to coach his daughter’s Bobby Sox game and play with his preschooler in the afternoon.

Tom Donnelly, a printing broker who arranges the publication of catalogues and flyers for Macy’s department stores and other East Coast firms, rises about 5 a.m. at his Laguna Niguel home to reach his Laguna Beach office by 6. After 13 years of early rising, Donnelly says he “wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“How else could I get to the golf course by 3?” he says, adding that the California weather and casual life style are tailor-made for early birds.

Brunansky, part owner of Full Spectrum Technology eye wear, which provides glasses for patients recovering from eye surgery, also manages the careers of his brother Tom of the St. Louis Cardinals, Don Drysdale (formerly a pitcher and now an announcer with the Dodgers) and Bruce Hurst of the Boston Red Sox.

“I’m in the office early (before 7 a.m.) because of the eye wear business, but because I’m in early, I can make calls to sports managers in the East,” says Brunansky, who lives in Orange. “You like to be the first one to talk to them. If they think I’m getting an early start, it tends to say: ‘This guy wants us.’ ”

Aside from the added edge it gives them, early birds enjoy another big advantage: a shorter morning commute. According to Nick Jones, associate transportation engineer at the California Department of Transportation, the number of cars on the San Diego Freeway at Culver Drive in Irvine from 5 to 6 a.m. more than doubles from 6 to 7 a.m.

During the peak hour of 8 to 9 a.m., the number of cars on that freeway has jumped from about 3,500 at 6 a.m. to about 8,600.

For Keim, his lengthy commute from Mission Viejo to a brokerage firm in Los Angeles would take twice as long two hours later. At 5 a.m. his Mazda can cruise right past the convergence of the interstates 5 and 405, but he can only inch his way through the bottleneck by late afternoon.

For some, an early beginning means an early ending; but for others, it merely stretches their day.

“That’s the bad news,” says Crouch. “We start on New York time, but we finish on West Coast time.”

Mike Ellis, a regional sales manager for Merrill Lynch in Irvine, is in the office at 6:30 a.m. but usually doesn’t finish until 5:30 p.m.

“You just work a longer day out here on the West Coast,” says Ellis, who moved to San Juan Capistrano from Georgia last year. “You start earlier, but you don’t necessarily finish earlier because you still have to turn your attention to local calls later in the day.”

Ellis begins his day much like others whose professional lives are linked to the stock exchange.

“I follow the sun,” he says. “I start with the East and work my way across the country, usually ending up my day by talking to Hawaii or Guam.”

Many of Ellis’ California comrades are doing the same thing. Poised between the time zones of the powerful East and the economically surging nations of the Pacific Rim, Southern California faces both east and west. And as Los Angeles emerges as an international center of finance, it is increasingly adapting to the demands of multiple time zones.

And for those dealing with Japan, 17 hours ahead of Pacific Time, the workday schedule can be particularly challenging, except apparently for the Japanese nationals working here. “They don’t even notice the time difference,” says Margaret Merrett, vice president of corporate communications for Sanwa Bank California in Los Angeles. “It’s very typical of the Japanese work ethic; they’d be here late at night even if they didn’t have to call Tokyo at 9 o’clock.”

Many early birds don’t eat meals in the traditional sense and certainly not at the traditional times. It’s hard to find someone to eat breakfast with at 5 in the morning and even harder to find a restaurant serving lunch at 9. That generally means trading power lunches for brown-bagging it. Dinners are often the only meal enjoyed with friends or family.

Brunansky says he gobbles a lunch at his desk because he can’t afford to take time off during the short span he has to make calls to the East. Keating says he doesn’t eat breakfast and often skips lunch or waits until the stock market closes at 1. And Donnelly grabs an early lunch in the late morning.

For families of early birds, East Coast time can be good and bad. The early starter is usually home by afternoon to cheer on Little Leaguers and oversee the Brownie troop but is long gone by breakfast and often too tired at night for lengthy outings.

Crouch at Merrill Lynch says his friends show no mercy (“they still go way into the night”), but his family has adapted.

Keating says most of his family rises relatively early except, of course, the teen-ager. In fact, his wife almost beats Keating out of bed. As a registered nurse, it’s not unusual for Theresa to get a wake-up call from the night supervisor at St. Joseph Hospital around 4:30 a.m. On these mornings, the house is buzzing with activity before 6.

It’s a different story at night. By early evening, all is quiet in the Keating household. After a game of catch with his 8-year-old son, dinner and a peek at the papers, Keating heads for his bedroom to set the alarm clock for 4:45.

By 9 o’clock, it’s lights out.