SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : THE DRIVING FORCES : 5 Workers Find the Best Fringe Benefit of All--Job Satisfaction : Their careers and backgrounds are different; what they have in common is happiness.

Why do most of the 6.3 million people who hold jobs in the Los Angeles Basin rise near dawn five days a week, pack into polluting automobiles and fight through nerve-wracking commuter traffic to reach what they call work ?

Because they enjoy eating three meals a day. Or because they want to feed, clothe, house and educate their families. And also, in the vast majority of cases, because they like what they do, according to Dr. Jerald Jellison, a USC social psychologist.

But then Jellison poses, “What the hell is satisfaction?”

Workplace research shows that happiness is most often based on one of four conditions: The worker has a basic like for his task, a like for the people who toil alongside, a respect for his boss or a feeling that he is paid, if not highly, at least equitably.

In the profiles that follow, five ordinary people describe what makes work more in their lives than a means of making money. They tell of sacrifices, trade-offs, risk-taking and rewards.

One worker learned a lesson in office politics and then courageously changed careers. Another left the comforting support of family and friends for a job that, while exciting, constantly carries a specter of instability. Another made a habit of seizing every opportunity within reach, while another found happiness by holding his expectations in perspective. The last found profit by depending only on himself when those around him lacked his burning desire to succeed.

Her Goals Are Tempered but Engineer Is Happy

Robin Sharff is an aerodynamicist; an engineer who figures out ways to make airplanes fly faster or farther.

She is one of 30 on a team at Rockwell International Corp. But at 25, she is the only woman, 2 1/2 years out of the University of Maryland.

Work “is a lot different” from college, Sharff said. “It’s less defined than I thought it would be. In college, you think everything is a question and answer out of a textbook. Here, you have the question, but you have to dig up the answer. And there are a lot more avenues than you think you can take.”

Sharff said she loves the challenge and “intellectual stimulation” of her work at Rockwell’s El Segundo plant. “It’s very dynamic. Technology is always changing. . . . When I’m working on a project that I’m really into, it does make me feel important.”

Yet her decision to join Rockwell was not made easily. Sure, the money was right. But for a defense job that at any moment could be toppled by a wind shift on Capitol Hill, she had to move 3,000 miles from her home in Baltimore.

“My family and I were very close,” she explained. “It seems like women my age in my home town are married and having kids . . . but women out here are just getting started. The East Coast is much more historical. They’re into their roots. Here, they’re more into sports and the beach.”

Although her career is in its infancy, Sharff has already modified the goal of instant engineering stardom she had as a student.

“I think maybe I was a little unrealistic in thinking that you can make yourself ‘a star’ so easily, when people in this business, they’re not all stars but they are all pretty smart. . . . The competition is a little tougher.”

Still, it’s more important to choose work that you enjoy than to worry about other considerations such as money, she said. If you spend eight hours a day in a demanding job, “you’d better be content.”

With No Room at Top, Cop Becomes a Banker

Even a street-wise police sergeant can get caught off guard. It happened to Larry Crabtree the day he stepped before an oral review board for the Downey Police Department, only to conclude that it was stacked against him.

Crabtree laid out all the reasons why he deserved to make lieutenant; how he had come out of the Navy after serving in Vietnam, and at 21 begun his law enforcement training as a patrolman in Los Angeles.

The board members heard him out, smiled and nodded approvingly--then promoted someone else.

“I learned that sometimes it takes more than being the best,” Crabtree said. “You need to be aware if there are any politics so you can know what you’re competing against.”

In his career as a cop, Crabtree had ridden motorcycle patrols, worked undercover drug cases and done just about everything “but fly a helicopter.” What he did next, however, was a test of courage even for him.

Today, Crabtree, 42, is a vice president and district manager at Wells Fargo Bank, seven years after bravely cashing in one career for quite another.

A Lakewood resident who is married and has two sons, Crabtree manages 25 of the bank’s retail branches on the Westside of Los Angeles. He specializes in making “the gray-area decisions” required when, for example, a longstanding customer suddenly weighs in with a particularly large overdraft. Do you refuse to honor it and risk embarrassing the customer for what may have been a simple oversight? Or do you politely cover it and keep your fingers crossed? No two cases are alike, Crabtree said, which is what makes it fun.

Despite his late start, Crabtree’s banking career has rapidly advanced; he is Wells Fargo’s first branch manager to make senior vice president.

Not that he was totally unprepared for the world of finance. While pursuing his degree in criminal justice at Cal State Long Beach, the Arkansas native had taken a number of business courses. And along with a brother, he had made a habit of putting part of his policeman’s paycheck into property investments back in the South.

“All of it was exciting,” Crabtree said of his law enforcement life, but “after a while I was finding it more exciting” to make money.

After a Time, Computer Job Just Didn’t Figure

Joseph M. Falkner, 49, had an aptitude for numbers.

So when he came out of UCLA with a degree in math, it made sense for him to go to work as a computer programmer with IBM. In those days the nation was locked in a technological race to the moon. “At that time we thought that (mathematics) was the solution to all the problems in the world,” he recalled.

It was a few years later, after taking a programmer’s job in 1968 at Southern California Edison, that Falkner realized he wanted to do more than spend eight hours a day flipping disks and punching a keyboard.

“I started looking around at people,” said the San Bernardino resident, who is married and the father of two teen-age girls. He saw that in a big company, “you are judged by the ‘people’ decisions you make.”

So Falkner dedicated himself to making a steady march up the management ladder.

In 1972, while a systems analyst in the utility’s customer service department, he started taking classes part time at USC, eventually earning a master’s in business administration. “I wanted to understand as much as I could about running a business.”

Meanwhile, he patiently worked his way up through various utility departments, from computers to customer service starting in Long Beach, “then Rosemead and then Inglewood, then Valencia.” He learned that opportunities come quickest to those who seek them.

“Don’t wait for a job vacancy to happen, but show an interest in the next job” up the line, Falkner advises.

Today, after 22 years with Edison, Falkner is the power company’s North Orange County District manager, supervising 159 employees who make sure that 180,000 households--about 600,000 people--receive electricity so consistently that they take it for granted. Much like Falkner’s management rise.

His secret? Set realistic objectives and strive to reach them, Falkner said. Instead of worrying about becoming company president, “what I try to do is come in every day and look at what I did the day before, and try to get one step closer to where it is I want to go.”

Same as in Childhood, He Likes Fixing Things

Who among us can say they are as satisfied as Gerry Perez? He says he wants nothing more than to be what he already is: a mechanical engineer for Lever Brothers Co.

“When I was a kid,” Perez, 42, recalled, “I used to get my dad’s wrenches and try to fix my bike. I’ve always been fascinated with nuts and bolts. Even if there’s nothing wrong with something, I like to work on it.”

Born in the Philippines just after World War II, Perez has a degree from Manila’s Mabau Institute of Technology. At the urging of a brother, he came to the United States in 1974 and still remembers spotting the Lever Brothers newspaper ad for an instrument mechanic’s job. In May, he will celebrate 16 years with the company.

Nowadays, Perez is project engineer at the company’s plant off the Santa Ana Freeway in Commerce. He designs and supervises the construction of processors that churn out such popular consumer items as Dove soap and Wisk detergent.

“I get satisfaction when the machine I put in takes care of the problem.” It’s as simple as that.

Married to a registered nurse and the father of two teen-age sons, Perez said he gladly puts up with the snarling weekday traffic between Commerce and his home in West Covina because he is doing work that he so enjoys.

“I look at money, that it’s not everything,” Perez said. “The most important thing is (that) I’m satisfied with the job, which I am.” Then he pauses thoughtfully before confiding with a chuckle, “It would be nice to have a lot of money . . . I’d like to win the lottery.”

Perez said he has been thinking about one day going back to school for a master’s degree that would qualify him for a higher salary. “But it’s hard having a family” and holding down a job while also going to school.

So for now, he says he is content: “This was my first job, and I hope it will be my last.”

This Self-Made Success Puts Emphasis on ‘Self’

He is a relentless hunter in a business suit; a San Fernando Valley real estate broker who leaves no “t” uncrossed, no “i” undotted, no task in the hands of one less committed, absolutely nothing to chance.

From all of this painstaking care, Ron Prechtl has won a faithful following of repeat customers over what has already been a remarkable career, even though he is only 28.

To appreciate his appetite for success, you need only know a few facts: At the same time Prechtl was cramming for high school finals at Chaminade in Chatsworth, he was studying for his real estate license, all of which he passed. He bought his first investment property at the ripe age of 18 by pulling together money from a college loan. Now, the driven son of a middle-class meat cutter ranks in the top 40 of the 80,000 Century 21 agents worldwide.

Prechtl said he owns two vacation homes, a small airplane, and last year he grossed about $300,000.

“The most important thing is not to get trapped in spending your time doing things that aren’t going to make you money. Goals are really important. You have to have that burning desire.”

While he complains about having to cope with “uncontrollables,” lenders, escrow agents, credit service workers and the like, who may see less urgency in a particular deal, he relishes those opportunities to swoop down at defeat and snatch away victory.

Perhaps it’s “a transaction where the buyer falls out of escrow, and these poor people are depending on you. And yet you pull it off, you close the deal and these people think you’re wonderful.”

But the same independence that makes Prechtl a successful agent also makes him an uncomfortable manager. At 19, while attending business administration classes at Cal State Northridge, he supervised a 13-member real estate office--and hated every minute.

“It didn’t appeal to me because I felt limited by what they could do,” Prechtl said. “I was trying to motivate people who I felt were not motivated.”

Even now, at the 75-member Northridge brokerage where he works, “I see people roaming around and wasting time and not focusing.”

So Prechtl finds happiness in going it pretty much alone.

“I’m content. . . . Well, we’re never supposed to be content.”