Passion for Helping People Prompts Crime-Awareness Life Style

Jan Sener has a passion for helping people, but when the one-time Michigan State University retail merchandising major went looking for a job, she hardly expected that it would be helping residents avoid becoming victims of crime.

“Actually, I have a passion for people, period,” said Sener, a San Clemente Community Services Officer who works in that city’s Neighborhood Watch Program.

“You become connected with the people, and it’s like a friend getting violated when they are victims of a crime,” said Sener, the mother of three sons. “Sometimes you get a real empty feeling.”

“You give residents support and tell them you have sympathy for what happened,” added Sener, who spends much of her time trying to convince people that it’s much better to take steps to prevent crime than to listen to her sympathize.

“People have to learn to lock their doors,” she said.

Besides the neighborhood watch, Sener conducts a series of classes including drug awareness for children, bicycle safety, baby-sitting, consumer fraud and a class to prevent drunk driving.

“I like grass-roots folks. You get to see the results of your effort,” she said. “I can identify with these people.”

Sener moved to California from Michigan to escape the cold and began working for the Police Department as a records clerk. Before that, she helped students overcome learning disabilities. Now her concern is helping senior citizens protect themselves against criminals, especially con artists.

She stresses that awareness is the key to a more crime-free community and that apathy is the biggest enemy.

“People who don’t want to take the time sometimes can end up being the victims,” she said. “It all comes back into the structure of the neighborhood watch. It is the best thing going.”

Despite the successes in the neighborhood watch, “you have to keep prodding so the program stays structured,” she said.

Five years ago, her drive to develop ways to help local residents protect themselves got her involved in the 15-year-old California Crime Prevention Officers Assn. This year she was elected its president.

She is the first female and nonsworn officer to hold the post, and last month she chaired the group’s quarterly training session in Costa Mesa.

Although she plans to continue her work in San Clemente, Sener said her knowledge “can move you in a lot of different directions either in government or private concerns to maintain security.

“It gives me a sense of satisfaction knowing I’ve helped to make a better life for people in this community,” she said. “I guess I will always stay in this kind of work in some area.”

In 1973, Leslie Smith thought she wanted a career that was different from the norm, so she became a barber in a one-chair shop in Newport Beach, directly across the street from the Balboa Bay Club.

“It was unique then for a woman to be a barber,” said the one-time Cal State Dominguez student, who charges $23 for a haircut.

“Hey, it’s worth it,” she said. “I give a good cut.”

And she talks. “I think too much,” she said. “I never shut up.”

Customers are entertained by her unusual shop, which looks more like a museum. It includes a moose head, a tuba hanging from the ceiling and an old ice bow where she keeps her towels.

Smith, 38, said customers want to know if she plans to hang any of the artifacts at a new shop she is opening about a mile away, which she will call World Famous Leslie’s Headquarters.

“Are they kidding? I don’t want any of this junk in my new shop,” said the Newport Beach resident. “I need a complete change.”

Her grand opening is scheduled Nov. 14--which happens to be her birthday.