Sales Persistence
If you think the younger generation is lazy, shiftless, unmotivated and uninspired by the good old American work ethic, meet Bob and Tom Siegmeth.
The 18-year-olds, fraternal twins who look identical, belong to their high school band, are headed for college in September and are the newest members of the Southern California real estate sales force.
As with the rest of their 1991 graduating class at Chatsworth High School, the pair were studying for semester finals in February and keeping up with musical and social obligations.
But in anticipation of later goals, they were also studying for the state real estate examination that some old-time agents say has become so difficult that they doubt they could now pass it.
Tom and Bob passed the first time they tried. And they did the same on their school finals.
Bob will probably attend Cal State Northridge as a business student in the fall. And Tom will enter the Pierce College honors program before entering UCLA to finish his undergraduate work in advance of medical school.
But neither got his license as an exercise in overachieving.
“Our mom has been selling real estate for almost 20 years, and we decided that if we got our licenses we could work as her assistants and earn college money,” Tom said.
“Besides, I know from her example that if you are willing to work hard, you can earn good money, and I don’t want to wait until I’m 30-something to buy a home or condominium.”
To mom, Mondae Siegmeth, a career saleswoman at the Century 21 Lamb office in Northridge, all this hustle comes as no surprise.
“They’ve always been willing to work for what they get,” she said. Still, even she was skeptical about their timetable.
They began attending class at the Calabasas Century 21 Training Center soon after they appeared with the Chatsworth High band in the Rose Bowl Parade.
They finished the real estate course--four hours a night, four nights a week for three weeks--just before their 18th birthdays Jan. 21.
They took the exam Feb. 25, just about the time of their high school finals.
A few days ago, they received word they had both passed.
“The test was hard,” Tom said, “but not anywhere near as bad as high school physiology.”
Community Calmers
When neighbors have a dispute in Santa Clarita these days, they head for the Volunteer Mediation Service instead of the courts--or the gun rack.
The Newhall-based, 18-month-old service has 36 trained volunteer mediators, each of whom has passed a 25-hour training course.
“We get a lot of cases that are referred to us by the small-claims court and others that come to us directly from the people involved,” Jean Salk, co-chairwoman of the service, said.
The new program, developed and funded by Los Angeles County, usually mediates landlord-tenant, neighbor, consumer-merchant, accident and domestic disputes. The service also has offices in San Pedro and the Florence-Firestone area.
The Newhall volunteers, working in pairs, have resolved about 300 cases using skills that they learned by working with William Hobbs of the Dispute Resolution Service of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.
“The important thing to remember in working with people who are often very upset with one another is not to take sides and not to try to create solutions,” Salk said.
She said it is important for the parties to work through the problem and reach an agreement.
“Our volunteers come from all walks of life and have a diverse ethnic background,” Mary Spring, the other co-chairwoman, said.
“I think they get real pleasure out of learning to mediate, and it’s a great way to serve your community,” she said, adding that many of the mediators work 40-hour weeks and mediate on their days off.
Bunker Mentality
The newly opened Valley Radiation Oncology Center in Tarzana is an affiliate of the Regional Cancer Center of St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.
It offers state-of-the-art radiation therapy in a patient-friendly atmosphere throughout the underground facility, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
The building’s 7-foot-thick walls include 12 inches of plate steel. The roof is covered with 1 million pounds of concrete.
One of the rooms has a top deck of concrete measuring 6 1/2 feet thick, reinforced with 167,000 pounds of steel. One of the treatment-room doors weighs 2,500 pounds.
Sounds like a good place to be in a Scud attack.
Andrew Peplow of Kiewit Construction Co. of Northridge, which built the facility, said there were a number of challenges in creating the building, mainly that it had to be built within 6,000 square feet, the space available.
And the main challenge to staff members, it would appear, would be in having to open and shut the 2,500-pound door.
Back to the Future
Every year the Visiting Nurses Assn. of the Antelope Valley hold a gala benefit at the Antelope Valley Country Club honoring a person or people who have greatly contributed to the quality of life in the area.
This year, as always, the event was held to coincide with the Academy Awards celebration, because, as association member Jackie McMahon said, “We have our stars too.”
This year the honorees were members of the Pioneers of the Antelope Valley, many of whom are in their 90s. Some are more than 100.
“These people are members of families that settled the area when it was nothing but dirt roads and tumbleweed,” McMahon said. “We probably have a lot to learn from them.”
One of the things they could learn has to do with “waste not, want not,” according to Josephine Williams, a younger member of the pioneering group, being just a few days shy of her 80th birthday.
“We raised most of our own food, and we didn’t throw anything away,” recalled Williams, who grew up in the Lake Hughes home in which she still lives. The house was built in 1886 by her great-grandfather.
Since those early years in the Antelope Valley, Williams has graduated from UCLA, become a schoolteacher, gone on a Fulbright Grant to Africa to update public school curriculum on the continent and retired. And her memories are vivid.
“We worked awfully hard in those days, tending the farm animals and raising crops. But we didn’t throw away much,” she said.
Clothing was recycled from parents to children. Farm equipment was repaired, not traded for new. Garbage was fed to the pigs.
“We didn’t have much money, but we had what we needed,” Williams said. “We bartered our pears and apples and plums for coffee, sugar and flour. We made our own soap.”
Williams says she is still as frugal as possible with the earth’s resources, but plastic milk containers have defeated her.
“I just didn’t know what to do with them, because our recycling center doesn’t take them, so I started cutting off the tops and using them to catch rainwater,” she said.
Overheard
“She’s so out of it she thinks ‘Dances With Wolves’ is a singles bar.”
--Woman at Teru Sushi in Studio City
