Sometimes, It Feels Good to Be in Stable Condition : Horse racing: Western High graduate Heath Stokes works as a groom at Los Alamitos Race Course, and hopes to study veterinary medicine in college.

So Cal Babe is looking good. The top of her mane, normally kept in a tight little braid, is being combed and teased into that wild, unkept look more common to rock stars than race horses. For the moment, So Cal Babe is one heavy metal mare.

“Looks good, doesn’t she?” groom Heath Stokes says proudly, patting the horse on its neck as he gently combs. “Usually, they don’t like this too much, but she doesn’t seem to mind.”

Apparently, the feeling is mutual. Stokes, 18, has spent thousands of hours feeding, grooming, and cleaning up after horses. And now, since graduating from Western High School last Thursday, Stokes’ work at the Los Alamitos Race Course has become nearly a round-the-clock job.

Before that, it was simply 40 hours a week.

Stokes grew up around horses. His father, longtime trainer Lonnie Stokes, owned a 180-acre horse breeding and training center just outside Tulsa, Okla., but spent much of the year traveling the horse racing circuit. Heath was born in Denver, two months premature. His parents had been in town for a race. They hadn’t expected him, Lonnie says, until New Mexico.

In any case, responsibility came at an early age.

“I’ve been helping out ever since I could walk,” Stokes says.

For Stokes, who moved with his family to Cypress four years ago, helping out meant waking up every day before 5 a.m. so he could get to the track by 5:30. He’d work until 7:30, rush home for a shower, and be in school by 8. After school, it was back to the stables, sometimes until after midnight.

Last weekend, he got a total of eight hours sleep.

“Sometimes, in the morning, my eyes are half open when I get here,” Stokes says in a drawl tempered by teenspeak. “You try to wake up on the straightaways, and doze off on the turns.”

Studying came whenever he had a chance, often in quick breaks at the stables. Still, he maintained an A average throughout high school.

As a groom, Stokes feeds and cares for his father’s stable of horses--So Cal Babe, Let’s Win, Classy El Rey and Speed Tripoli--along with many others. He’s employed by 14 trainers in all.

He also works as a pony rider, the person who escorts the horses to the starting gate before a race. He does this aboard his sturdy, old steed, Moose. Stokes is paid $10 for every horse he “ponies” to the gate. He usually delivers about 10 horses per night. If he has more horses to get to the gate than he can handle, he hires other pony riders to help.

Stokes’ earnings have helped him pay for his pickup truck, but he also saves for college. He says he probably will study veterinary medicine, but isn’t sure about making it his career. You can’t be around the horses as much, he says, when you’re stuck at the animal hospital.

“I about went crazy when we had three months off once,” Stokes said as he raked the hay from the stable floor. “I mean, I had time for a social life and everything, but . . .”

He was interrupted by an announcement over the Los Alamitos loudspeaker:

“Anyone out there who wants to play softball,” the announcer boomed, “meet at the field in 15 minutes.”

Stokes shrugged. He doesn’t have much time for games. The small room at his father’s stable contains a tiny refrigerator and a couch that he uses when he’s too tired to drive home at night. There’s also a football, a baseball mitt and a bow and arrow set, now covered with dust.

Archery used to be one of his passions, back when he had more time. So did basketball. Stokes played for Western his freshman and sophomore years, but a knee injury ended his career in the first game of his junior season. As a senior, he helped coach the freshman team. He hopes to coach again next fall.

Right now, though, his focus is on horses. His father’s stable is in a rebuilding mode; horses are sometimes bought and sold overnight. It’s Stokes’ job to see that they’re well-cared for.

He bathes them in baby oil for a shiny coat, feeds them gelatin for internal bleeding, sprays them with fly repellent to keep the bugs away, rubs their feet with Super Hoof dressing, and makes poultices of mud and menthol to cool and soothe their legs after races. If they don’t like the poultice, Stokes puts chili pepper on the outside so they won’t chew it off.

Knowing what’s best for horses, Stokes says, comes from experience. Growing up on a 200-horse breeding farm meant you learned about life--and death--pretty quick. When a favorite horse has to be sold--or worse, destroyed--you’re better off remembering that it’s a business.

“It’s a fine line with the horses,” he says. “They’re pets, but they’re not.”

And sometimes, they’re dangerous.

During the winter of his sixth-grade year, Stokes headed out one snowy morning to feed the horses. When he came to the 10-acre pen that held the mares and their newborn colts, Stokes tromped through the pen, poured the grain into the feeding buckets, turned and began walking toward the gate.

He was half way there when he heard the mares stampeding toward him.

“They trampled me pretty good,” he says. “I got a big gash over my eye, had to have stitches . . . but I still played my basketball game the next night.”

One morning last week, Stokes and Moose escorted some horses out for a lap around the track. The sun had been up less than an hour, but the track was already abuzz with activity. Near the grandstands, several trainers watched the scene and talked shop.

So what do you think I can get for those fillies? ... You hear about that track record yesterday? ... Hey, I thought you were cutting back on that Red Man ...

There was a pause when Stokes came by, leading Classy El Rey back to her stable. Finally, one trainer turned to another and said:

“That kid ponies just like a kitten, don’t he?”

Stokes says he has built a reputation for being able to handle difficult horses, and that has helped his business. Two years ago, he received a last-minute invitation to work a summer for trainer/owner D. Wayne Lukas at Del Mar.

It was demanding work, Stokes said. You had to punch in on a time clock at 4:30 a.m., and sleep in bare-bones living quarters. But caring for the thoroughbreds--worth up to a half-million dollars each--”was worth it,” he said, “Plus, you got $5 an hour and 1% of what the horses made.”

Not that he’s after fame and fortune. A horse is a horse, says Stokes. He likes quarter horses the same as thoroughbreds or tired old ponies. He loves to see their reaction when he gives them their special pre-dinner treat--alfalfa bundles--every afternoon around 4:30. The stable comes alive. It’s Happy Hour for the horses.

Every night before he leaves, Stokes says he takes a minute to see that all the horses are calm. The noise from the nearby San Diego Freeway makes them nervous, he says, and the especially skittish have to be treated with care.

Some horses do better if they have a goat in their stall to serve as a buddy. Others, like Classy El Rey, like it when they have a peep hole to see into the stall next door.

But usually, the radio works best. Stokes says he leaves it on each night before he leaves. Sometimes, he says, he’ll even affix headphones on the horses’ ears.

The type of music? Doesn’t really matter, Stokes says.

Heavy metal might do.