COLUMN ONE : Struggling With the Downturn : Caught in the Southland’s spreading joblessness, three couples cut back wherever possible and look for ways out of a tightening economic vise.

Bill Sanders, once accustomed to a six-figure income and the perks of the executive life, now is struggling as a fledgling entrepreneur and often wonders whether he ever again will be a top boss at a big company.

Mario Orellano, laid off as a plumber at Lockheed Corp. and dismayed over the high cost of housing in the Southland, plans to pack up and try to find a new job and home in Las Vegas.

Jane Sedaka, an accounting clerk from Redondo Beach who had a solid employment history until being thrown out of work this year, spends many of her days watching her children and studying the help-wanted ads in the newspapers.

Sanders, Orellano and Sedaka are among the thousands caught up in a rising tide of joblessness and economic distress in Southern California. All of them prospered when the local economy was more robust. But now, to varying degrees, they are suffering from the area’s deep slump.

The turnabout comes amid a growing sense that California’s quality of life and economic promise are fading. Probably never before has a downturn dovetailed with such a fierce array of severe social and environmental problems, ranging from violent crime to smog to traffic congestion.

“If I were looking for a place to live today, Los Angeles would not be high on my list,” Sanders said.

Granted, Southern California has suffered through other economic woes, but this time things are different: The local economy is going through long-term structural changes, highlighted by the flight of the aerospace industry and other manufacturers.

Those changes are cutting a wide swath through the local economy, eliminating the jobs of executives and blue-collar workers alike. By one closely watched measure, California has lost 109,200 jobs over the past 12 months, almost half of them in Los Angeles County, and major layoffs have continued into the holiday season.

Along with the harsh presence of worsening social problems, those economic facts are stirring people such as Sanders, Orellano and Sedaka to reassess their careers, their futures and, in some cases, their feelings about living here.

Mario Orellano and his wife, Evangelina, are on the verge of giving up on Southern California. Laid off in September at Lockheed, Mario wants a good job, and he wants it faster than he thinks he can find it in the slumping Los Angeles area.

“Bills keep coming. Food has to be put on the table every day. The rent has to be paid every month,” he said. “It’s devastating.”

What’s more, the Orellanos are tired of apartment living and would like to own a house again--and they don’t think they’ll ever be able to afford one they like here.

So, after the holidays, the Orellanos plan to hunt for a job and a home in Las Vegas. As much as they hope to find a new life in Nevada, their hearts sometimes ache at the thought of leaving.

“I’d be leaving my mother, my brothers and sister and daughters,” said a somber-faced Evangelina, a lifelong Southern Californian who grew up in La Habra. “I never thought I’d be moving out of California,” she added. “The thought never entered my mind.”

Yet the Orellanos are increasingly certain that they need to leave. Evangelina, 57, who suffers from arthritis and high blood pressure, says she doesn’t work because of her health.

Mario, 56, figures he is no longer a prime candidate for the diminishing supply of union pay-scale plumbing jobs in Southern California. Employers, he said, “just look at you and figure what could they get out of you.” When they look at him, Mario said, “they see six, maybe 10 years.”

These days, the Orellanos are living on $210 a week in unemployment benefits and their savings.

In Las Vegas, Orellano hopes to find work in the construction industry or as a maintenance plumber at one of the major hotels. He also started studying for a contractor’s license.

Even if Mario can’t find a job paying as much as the $42,000 he earned at Lockheed last year, he assumes that the lower cost of buying or renting a house in Nevada will make up much of the difference. He pays $826 a month for his family’s two-bedroom apartment in Brea.

This isn’t the first time Mario has fallen victim to a plant closing. He worked at Ford’s car assembly plant in Pico Rivera for 15 years until the auto maker shut it down in 1980. Seven months later, he caught on with Lockheed.

But the last time he was out of work, Mario contends, it was easier to find a new job. “All the heavy industries seem to have left, and you don’t have much to choose from any more,” he said.

Although he generally comes across as easy-going, Mario is angry about the pending shutdown of the Lockheed plant. He is bitter about the blue-collar workers like himself who are losing their jobs while managers are getting new jobs with the company in Georgia.

Economic distress has been felt around the Orellano family. One of Mario and Evangelina’s two married daughters, Desiree Corso, recently lost her job as a computer operator. She is studying for the Civil Service exam to become a postal worker.

Meanwhile, Desiree, her husband, Joseph, and her 2-year-old son, Tristan, are living at the Orellanos’ two-bedroom apartment in Brea.

For now, having parents to stay with is a blessing, Desiree said, but “they want their privacy, we want our privacy and then there’s a 2-year-old running around.”

Jane Sedaka and her husband, Jack, are used to rolling with the punches of volatile industries. Over the past decade, they learned to be flexible the hard way--Jane, 31, and Jack, 27, each lost a couple of jobs due to corporate cutbacks or reorganizations.

After being out of work most of this year, Jane says she would like her next job to be with a “stable” company. But she is quick to add that she doesn’t “know what stable is any more.”

Even so, like many other two-income families, the Sedakas have been able to weather the loss of one job.

Jane earned $24,000 in 1990 as an accounting clerk for the airline ticket reservations firm System One in El Segundo. When her husband, an aerospace industry quality-control inspector, was out of work for two months last year, she kept the paychecks coming in.

In January, the Sedakas’ roles were reversed. System One’s computer operations were taken over by an outside company and Jane’s job was eliminated. Now that her unemployment benefits have run out, the Sedakas and their two young boys are relying on Jack’s $35,000 annual income and the pay from Jane’s occasional temporary office jobs.

The Sedakas aren’t worried about paying the $950-a-month rent on their two-bedroom Redondo Beach apartment. But otherwise, they are cutting back.

Jack, for instance, is packing his lunch instead of eating out with friends at work. Some needed auto repairs are being put off.

“There is no room for error,” Jack said. “If you decide to blow $50 on a nice dinner, that means some creditor will go unpaid.”

All the same, Jane says she is determined to keep an upbeat attitude, largely because she doesn’t want to upset her children. It’s not always easy.

As much as she enjoys spending more time with her children--3-year-old Jeremy and 16-month-old Nicholas--it is a strain being stuck at home all day after spending more than 10 years in the full-time work force. “Sometimes I need to go out and scream,” Jane said.

Compounding the pressure is the difficulty she has had for the first time in her life finding a full-time job.

In better times, Jane would be considered a hot prospect for an accounting clerk’s job, said Patrick Cronin, a career consultant with AppleOne Employment Services who is assisting her.

He said she has a good background in a variety of bookkeeping and accounting tasks, strong references from past employers and an engaging personality. Although she has no college degree, she has taken accounting and bookkeeping courses. Born in the Philippines, Jane also speaks Tagalog and the Fukien dialect of Chinese.

Trouble is, at a time when companies are retrenching, many are cutting back sharply in their accounting departments or aren’t doing any hiring. “We just haven’t had a position available for her,” Cronin said.

Jane says that part of her problem in getting a new job may be that she has worked exclusively in clerical accounting or bookkeeping jobs since graduating from high school. These days, when she applies for something else, her lack of experience is a liability.

Despite their job setbacks, Jane and, in particular, her husband--who bears a vague resemblance to pop singer Neil Sedaka, a third cousin he has never met--are committed to staying in the Southland. Jane has lived in the Philippines and Seattle but Jack has been a Southern Californian all his life.

Along with working 47 hours a week, Jack is taking three courses at Cal State Long Beach toward a bachelor’s degree in physics. He eventually hopes to earn a master’s degree in applied physics, and his dream is to work on construction of the first nuclear fusion reactor.

“I’m working full-time and going to school, so it’s quite a burden,” he said. “I can’t complain, though. At least I have a job.”

Back in 1965, when Bill Sanders was a young computer systems engineer with IBM, he attended a convention in Los Angeles and fell in love with California. Enticed by the climate and an atmosphere where “it seemed like everything was possible,” Bill, a native of Cleveland, requested a transfer.

Over the years, Bill and his wife, Bonnie, have had many of their relatives follow them to Southern California, and three of their four grown children live here. So, they feel rooted in the area and aren’t about to leave.

Bonnie, an elementary school teacher’s aide, continues to enjoy living in Southern California. But her husband--trim, gray-haired and somewhat professorial at 52--is distressed by “the hassle of daily living and the way people behave toward one another.” Those misgivings are matched by his declining career expectations.

His field, data processing and information management, has been hit particularly hard by the local recession. Aerospace companies, banks and savings and loans are big users of computer data, and all of those industries are retrenching.

When Bill lost his last corporate job in August, 1990, as the director of information services for Candle Corp., he was making $140,000 a year in salary and bonuses.

Since then, he has looked for work, sometimes aggressively, and at other times, casually. “There’s not a lot out there right now,” he explained.

On top of that, he said, “there are people as qualified as or more qualified than me who are out of work as well.”

Besides, Bill’s attention was diverted by a $225,000 investment he made in the restaurant business after losing the Candle job: he now is the proud owner of a new Mrs. Garcia’s fast-food franchise in Culver City.

Bill, like many executives and managers thrown out of work, found the idea of being his own boss enticing. On top of that, early in college he studied the restaurant and hotel management businesses. In some ways, he thought, opening a restaurant would be like returning to his first love.

But just as it is with rekindled romances, the reality isn’t as pleasant as the fantasy.

Bill’s restaurant opened in May, and so far it is just breaking even. An avid stocks and options trader, Sanders figures he would have done better if he invested his money elsewhere.

At times, his sense of self-esteem suffers. Bill once had 200 people working for him, including a personal secretary to take care of things such as arranging his doctor’s appointments.

Now he has to do things for himself. When the delivery boy calls in sick, he delivers the burritos. “Whatever has to be done, I do,” he said.

Bill says it took six months to adjust to the change in his circumstances and to learn to enjoy his new routine. “I place a high value on my time, and there are some things I don’t like spending my time on,” he said.

These days, Bill is more apt to lose his temper over seemingly minor matters, his wife says. “He attempts for a while to keep things looking good on the surface, but then his insecurity begins to show,” she said.

For Bonnie, the main change has been the loss of financial security. This “was the first time in my life I could go to a store and not worry about the price tags,” she said. “Now I have to again.”

Meanwhile, Bill still longs for the comforts, challenges--and income--of a corporate job. “This is what I did for 30 years,” he said. “I’m used to being a senior manager and having lots of people working for me.”

If an interesting job came along, Bill said, he’d be willing to take a salary of as low as $95,000, significantly less than he used to make. He worries that if he remains out of his field much longer, it would be “easy to lose your technical currency and your feel of what’s going on in the business.”

Bill and Bonnie Sanders still live comfortably in the 3,000-square-foot Malibu home they bought in 1966. They have never been big spenders for people of their means: These days, eating out often means picking up something at their Mrs. Garcia’s.

Their main luxuries are their cabin in Big Bear and their one-third ownership of a single-engine airplane valued at $25,000. That frugality is now paying off; Bill says they have enough savings to maintain their current lifestyle for maybe five years.

Still, the idea of eating up money that was intended for retirement gnaws at him. “I don’t have any meaningful income coming in,” he said. “I can’t do this indefinitely.”