Potential Call-Up Causes Anxiety Among Reservists : Military: Financial questions, disruption of family life raise concerns for those who may go on active duty.

Mike Nesbit, an SDG&E; service representative, worries about paying his mortgage. Barbara Nastari, a nurse, isn’t sure who will take care of her dog and pay her bills. Emmitt and Diane Loggins are anxious about leaving their two teen-agers. All four are military reservists who might be given 24 hours to drop their daily lives and serve their country.

President Bush’s orders--summoning military reservists Wednesday to ease the manpower pinch in the Persian Gulf crisis--spread anxiety and fear in a widening circle in many homes. In San Diego, which has one of the highest concentrations of reservists in the nation, families are bracing for an emotional as well as financial shock. Calling up a reservist could cause his income to be halved, some say.

Nesbit, a pharmacy technician with the Air Force Reserve, is now officially on alert. Nesbit, 43 and single, figures he could lose up to one-fourth of his usual salary if he is ordered to active duty. He is uncertain how he would keep up with his $1,200 monthly mortgage payment.

“I just have to wing it, I guess,” said Nesbit, who has been in the reserves six years and is looking into getting a loan. His recent training in chemical warfare makes him a likely candidate for the first wave of reserves to be called, he said.

Despite laws protecting their civilian jobs and employee benefits, Nesbit and the thousands of reservists President Bush is expected to mobilize could face significant financial difficulties, officials said. The families of those called will be left behind to weather bills, housing payments and generally high living costs on what in many cases will be substantially reduced income.

“It could be a financial tragedy for me,” said Rick Barajas, 50, who serves in an Air Force Reserve aerial refueling unit. Barajas estimated that his active duty salary would probably be less than half his usual $50,000 annual income as a utilities supervisor.

“But I had my eyes open when I joined the reserves,” he said. “I knew something like this could happen.”

One of Barajas’ biggest financial concerns is his company’s retirement plan, under which a certain amount of his paycheck is set aside along with an additional contribution from the company. If he is not being paid by the company, no money will be set aside.

In San Diego, there are more than 7,000 Navy, 1,000 Army, and 300 Coast Guard reservists, officials say. Air Force and Marine Corps officials were unable to offer estimates of locally based reserves.

Should a large-scale call-up occur, it probably will not have much impact on the area’s economy, though it could saddle co-workers with additional responsibilities, predicted Max Schetter, a senior vice president at the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

Here, and across the nation, only a small number of the United States’ 1.16 million military reservists have been called, although specific numbers were unavailable. Some reservists have been activated, but most are waiting for the call.

For those, like Barbara Nastari, who are waiting, these are tense times. She jumps every time the phone rings. And for now, she has put her life on hold.

Nastari, a 37-year-old Oceanside resident, is the trauma program manager at Children’s Hospital and Health Center. Lt. Cmdr. Nastari, a nurse, is also a member of a Navy Reserve medical unit.

Starting Monday, she will begin two weeks active duty as a nurse at the Navy Hospital in Balboa Park, where the shipping out of active-duty medical personnel has forced a 50% reduction in inpatient surgical services and a 20% reduction in outpatient services.

Nastari, however, is more concerned with what might happen after this two-week stint. The threat of a deployment far from home weighs heavily on her. And it raises so many questions: Would the tuition be wasted if she enrolled in classes this fall to finish her master’s degree, as she planned? Should she try to cancel now a lecture she is scheduled to give at a national conference this fall? Should she try to get refunds on airline tickets that she has purchased for an October visit with her sister?

“By the time you are in your late 30s, your life is planned out, then something like this comes along,” she said. “When you are in the reserves, you forget that somebody else has control of your life. You can’t just say, ‘Ha, ha, I don’t want to play any more.’ ”

Anxious, she spends her free time trying to organize her life so she can leave in 24 hours. But that’s not easy, and she isn’t sleeping well. She has just moved into her custom-built “dream” home, where the pool is still being constructed and the yard is being landscaped. And she still has to figure out who is going to take care of her Scotty, a small dog named Scarlet O’Hara.

“This is very scary,” she said.

Reservists are supposed to report within 24 hours, said Lt. Col. Earl Gunnerson, a U.S. Army spokesman in Los Angeles. But the military realizes that some of those soldiers and sailors might be on vacation, or otherwise held up when they are called, so exceptions are made.

Employers are required by law to rehire reservists called into active duty when they return to civilian life, either by holding open the reservists’ old jobs or by providing them with similar work of comparable position and salary. Federal laws also protect reservists’ civilian benefits packages.

However, employers are not required to provide those benefits or pay reservists’ salaries while they are on active duty.

As a result, many of those called up will have to get by on their military salaries alone, which in some cases could mean sacrificing lucrative pay and benefit packages for extended periods. Reserve pay varies according to rank and time in grade.

But a Pentagon spokesman said such hardships should not come as a surprise to reservists.

“Everyone who (joins) knows that there is always a possibility that they are going to be called up on active duty,” Air National Guard Maj. Doug Hart said. “Most of these people receive briefings and information on what their rights are.”

For others, the concerns are not just financial. Dianne Loggins, 40, a personnel recruiter for the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in San Diego, serves in the Navy Reserve with her 44-year-old husband, Emmitt.

The couple also has two teen-age sons and has arranged for Emmitt’s sister to tend them if necessary. But Dianne Loggins said she believes that, because she is scheduled to undergo surgery this fall, she might not be activated.

For the Logginses, the prospect of a double deployment means a double financial hardship. Dianne Loggins said she and her husband are both worried about the effect active duty might have on their incomes and that it bothers her that they would not receive any compensation from their civilian employers if she were called up.

“That financial part of it is a real concern to me,” she said. “They (her employers) don’t give you anything but the time off.”

Loggins said she earns about $29,000 a year from Kaiser. Her husband earns about $31,000 a year from his civilian employer.

“If one of us goes, we could still swing it . . . (but) it would be a little difficult,” Emmitt Loggins said. “If both of us were called up, we couldn’t handle that.”

Times staff writer Richard A. Oppel contributed to this report.