After 4 Decades, Frank Hicks Is Leaving His County Job

‘I started as a surveyor and I can remember all the new streets I’ve helped put in the county--through bean fields and orange groves, and even through a pig farm.’

--Frank P. Hicks,

a principal construction inspector

For the past 10 years, Frank P. Hicks thought life would be better if he owned his own business and didn’t work for someone else. But somehow, time just passed by.

“I could have done a lot better and could have accomplished more if I owned my own business,” he said. “Well, one week went by, and then a year went by, and then I turned around and they were all gone.”

Actually, Hicks, 61, has been dreaming the same dream for nearly 4 decades. And now may be the time to try it, for on March 23, he will walk out after working 40 years with Orange County, much of it in his current job as a principal construction inspector.

Hicks is the holder of the Golden Orange Award, which automatically goes to the county’s most senior worker. He started working for the county at age 21, and for the past 25 years, he has never missed a day of work except for vacations.

“I kept thinking and thinking about going into my own business. But you hate to leave so many friends and outstanding people you work with--even though I knew they would still be around,” he said.

But Hicks also has friends in private business who, he said, are “making five times what I do and pay less taxes.”

“I thought I would have liked to be in that position, too,” he added.

But Hicks is mostly satisfied with his lot, although he said he wished he had gotten more education to help him advance in his work with the county.

“Things would have been a lot better with a degree,” he said, noting that the sum of his higher education came in the form of 3 years of college credit gained in night school. “If I had a son, I would tell him to be sure to get an education and at least a master’s degree.” Hicks said he and his wife have no children.

Hicks has watched a lot of changes in Orange County in his years working for the county. “I’ve looked out a lot, but I’ve never looked back. I started as a surveyor and I can remember all the new streets I’ve helped put in the county--through bean fields and orange groves, and even through a pig farm.

“That was rather strange . . . and smelly.”

Hicks said he enjoyed his work, especially during the time Orange County was blossoming and the construction industry was booming around 1952.

“Every time a new city was incorporated, builders would feel that was the end of the boom, but it never did slow down,” he said. “People in construction would say to me, ‘We’ll go away and you’ll still be there making money working for the county.”

The dream of owning his own business still burns in Hicks. “I’ve put in a lot of time thinking about this retirement and I might end up at work again, and it might be in my own business,” he said.

When Hicks walks away on March 23, it will be a double celebration. He and his wife, Evelyn, were married on that day 38 years ago.

For a number of years, Dede Pagnanelli lived in the shadow of four huge older brothers, all successful football players at Huntington Beach High School, and later at college.

One brother, Marco Pagnanelli, was once starting quarterback at the U.S. Naval Academy.

“I really love my brothers and I’m very proud of them, but I guess I found myself living in their shadows,” she said.

Pagnanelli also feels her massive brothers may have affected her social life in high school. “I think most of the guys were afraid to date me because of my brothers,” she said. “I never went to a prom or a homecoming dance.”

But no more. The “little Pagnanelli,” as she was called, now is a cheerleader at Orange Coast College and runs the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes and the 400-meter and mile relay squads for the Pirates.

After the first 2 weeks of the track season, she’s unbeaten. “I don’t like to lose,” she explained.

The college sophomore said she thinks her lot has changed while attending Orange Coast.

“I love it,” she said. “The guys here at Coast don’t know much about my brothers, so dating has become a part of my life.”

Acknowledgments--Alberta Christy, a bank assistant manager, member of the Girls’ Club of Santa Ana board of directors and an appointee to the U.S. Selective Service System, has been named 1989 Woman of the Year for the 72nd Assembly District. A Santa Ana resident, Christy also holds the 1986 award as Black Woman of Achievement from the NAACP.