Fastest Fingers in the West Go Dancing Check to Check

As Thomas Chavira listens to the final game rules, the fingers of his right hand type instinctively into the air.

“I’m breaking your legs if you lose,” warns his coach Nina Merikan. “If you lose, I don’t want you to ever talk to me again.”

The pressure is on.

Chavira--by no means, a lightweight--and his co-workers, are warming up their encoding machines, preparing to go head to head--or “check to check”--in First Interstate Bank’s annual “Proof Tournament of Champions.”

Pride, not to mention a trip to Cancun plus 500 bucks, were at stake recently as the top check handlers in Southern California battled. The winner would go on to challenge Northern California’s champ for the state trophy. And that winner would then have a shot at the corporate title: The Fastest Check Processor in the West.

“That trophy is staying. It’s glued here,” vowed Rodger Higgins, check processing division manager and chief cheerleader for Southern California. On this day of competition, he explains that his Northern California counterpart is now a rival. “Normally we’re good friends, but not this time of the year.”

Hoping to see their own name engraved on the trophy, 66 contenders entered the qualifying rounds. But only the speediest four remain, gathered earlier this month in the basement of the earthquake-proof, security-tight downtown Los Angeles building for instructions.

“If the checks fall out, we’ll pick them up,” says head referee Ana Barahona of the 2,000-item bundle each will receive. “If your machine breaks down, inform your supervisor.”

At age 20, Chavira is the youngest contestant and the only man among the semifinalists. While a broken arm kept the Pierce College engineering student out of last year’s competition, he challenged the winner to a grudge match and won.

So this year, the smart money is on Chavira.

Well-wishers approach and shake his hand. Timekeeper Salvador Lara runs up with last-minute strategies. To save precious milliseconds, he advises that Chavira place rubber bands around his wrist to secure the finished check bundles.

Meanwhile, the other contenders manage to escape the center stage spotlight.

It’s Cyan Ngo’s 28th birthday and her best friend has sent a dozen red roses.

For a week now, Anica Ng-Parish, 31, has been coming to work a half an hour early to practice.

And Maria DeleCruz, 26, who placed second during the qualifier, sits quietly, her face mired in concentration.

For those of you newspaper readers not up on check processors, they are the ones responsible for inputting check amounts and making sure they balance. For example, if Mary B. deposits four checks and fills out a slip totaling $213.93, these processors make sure the total is $213.93 and not $21,393.

“People add wrong,” explains Ng-Parish. “Sometimes they’re three cents off. Sometimes a thousand dollars off. We have to correct it. They forward their totals wrong sometimes misplacing commas or decimal points.”

(For contest purposes, though, they’re only inputting, not balancing.)

“Contestants, are you ready?” shouts Barahona.

For the next 30 minutes, the only sound in the vast service center comes from the four encoding wheels stamping the values and bank’s endorsement on the checks.

“As soon as their eyeballs see the number, their fingers key it,” says Higgins. “When you hear the operators running slower, they are entering a large dollar amount.”

Large amounts are something this group knows well. Each evening, they handle more than a billion dollars in checks. Yes, that’s billion with a b . While volume varies by day and month, this represents an average of 1.2 million checks daily, which arrive by Brinks truck and helicopter to this undisclosed location.

“We don’t get out of here until everything is processed,” says Barahona. Usually, this is sometime after midnight.

But on the first three days of the month when paychecks, Social Security, retirement and rent checks all hit at once, the shift can run as long as 10 hours.

And sales are no bargains for these processors either. “When we see a department store sale in the newspaper, we know that night’s volume will go up,” adds Barahona. “December is the heaviest month and January the lightest.”

This just one pit stop in the fast lane of check processing. Next, high-speed reader/sorters record the “MICR” strip on the bottom of checks, photocopy, endorse and sort by bank--at a rate of 60,000 to 90,000 items per hour.

Check bundles are boxed up for the nightly helicopter ride to the Burbank airport, where three Lear jets whisk them off to the Federal Reserve and various correspondent banks. Other “in country” checks leave for Clearing Houses where they are exchanged among California banks.

For the people who handle the paper deluge, numbers are a universal language. The predominantly female operators hail from more than 30 countries--among them Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico, El Salvador and Armenia. By day, many take care of families, attend school or work a second job. This evening, they are fans, clustered by the door to avoid distracting their co-workers.

As with Olympic downhill skiing, seconds count in check processing. Ng-Parish whizzes through her check deck in 28 1/2 minutes at a winning rate of 4,188 items per hour--less than one second per check. DeleCruz finishes second, Ngo third and Chavira fourth.

A stunned Chavira receives consolation from friends and rues the $22.22 item that repeatedly gave him trouble. Ngo deals with her disappointment privately. An exhausted and shaken DeleCruz rests her hand on her forehead. Even the winner still has the jitters.

“I’m taking two Rolaids,” laughs the Hermosa Beach mother of two who plays volleyball and cross-stitches. “I have been in nerve-racking situations before. Maybe that helped.”

In real life, check processing goes much more slowly than in the contest world, with operators averaging 1,400 items per hour. According to Ng-Parish, half the job is taken up balancing customer goofs in addition.

“I don’t think people realize how their checks are processed from the number of errors that we see,” she says. “There are no elves correcting them. It’s just us.”

Last week, amid streamers, banners and balloons, Anica Ng-Parish narrowly lost to William Mazana, 21, of Fremont, who goes on to represent California. But don’t get too teary: she won a $750 consolation prize.