A Fresh Start : Unskilled Workers Get a Chance to Help Rebuild Store Vandalized in Riots

Ronald Jackson, known as O. G. Raider when he ran with the Santana Block of the Compton Crips, once had a limited resume. There was just one entry--drug dealer. Then he did 4 1/2 years in state prison. Not much of a recommendation for a job-seeker.

But a chance contact led to work on the reconstruction of the Sears store in Hollywood, which was looted, torched in five places and waterlogged after the spring riots.

Jackson soon found himself tearing down walls and tearing up floors, rising to foreman of a labor crew.

“Drug dealing is more profitable but I’m not into that now,” he said Thursday, with the Sears store back in business a week and another job soon to start. “When you get seven to 10 years in prison, it negates what you made when you were out there,” he said.

Jackson, 34, was one of about 80 unskilled laborers hired for the Sears job through an agreement with the United Minority Contractors Assn., a group that was organized shortly before the riots.

Working together with skilled workers brought in by the Monrovia-based Shackelford Construction Co., Jackson and the other newcomers finished their $800,000 portion of the $1.2-million job on time and on budget, said James Shackelford, general manager of the firm.

“We literally gutted the entire building, redid the electrical, the plumbing, new walls, ceilings, floors, displays, carpets, paint, decoration--the whole building,” he said.

With workers from rival gangs and different ethnic groups, “It took some adjustment on everybody’s part,” Shackelford said.

“Some of them had on their hard-faced attitudes, the cool that comes from having to be bad,” he said. “It was absolutely uplifting to see the transition that took place, the reliability in terms of showing up at 6 a.m. every day and putting in a good day’s work.”

Perry Chlan, manager of media relations at Sears’ Chicago headquarters, said the retail giant decided to go with minority contractors as a sign of “our commitment to the community.”

“We were going to use these people to rebuild, we stayed on the schedule and it’s a real nice story,” he said.

At first, he said, Sears executives had to weigh the economics of reopening the store. Located just west of Western Avenue on Santa Monica Boulevard, it opened in 1928 as Sears’ third outlet in Los Angeles.

“It was an older store and it had received an extensive amount of water damage, so we had to take a real hard look as to the repair cost,” he said.

With high temperatures in the building, no electricity and four inches of water on the basement floor, the humidity was like a rain forest, workers said. Merchandise that was not looted was lost to mildew.

“I don’t know if I can tell you there was never a doubt in our mind, but this is a very important store to us,” Chlan said. “It’s a pillar in the community.”

In the first few days since its widely promoted reopening on Sept. 25, the Hollywood Sears store has racked up about 3,000 sales a day, about double the pre-riot rate, assistant manager John Cothran said.

“We had a big rush when we first opened the doors and we had to stand back, but it’s gone smoothly and all the customers are pleased with the store,” he said.

Michael Morgan, the general manager, pointed proudly to new lighting fixtures that deliver almost twice the illumination as before.

Extra space has been found to increase the size of the men’s, women’s and children’s clothing departments, he said, a sign of changing times.

Located in the heart of a densely populated immigrant neighborhood, the store now reflects a smaller demand for lawn mowers and swing seats and a greater demand for clothes, work shoes and do-it-yourself tools.

Plans also call for construction of an eight-foot security fence around the parking lot.

Almost all the 200 employees, most of whom live nearby, are back at work, he said. Some stayed on preparing for the renovation, Morgan said, while others found work at nine other Sears stores.

Reflecting the diversity of the neighborhood, the employees speak more than 10 languages among them, Morgan said, including Spanish, Armenian, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Yiddish and several Indian dialects.

Although he closed the store early in the afternoon of the second day of the riots, when the trail of fires and looting moved north to the Hollywood area, some of the workers came back on their own the next day, Morgan said.

“The managers didn’t ask us, but we came back because we wanted to save our jobs,” said one worker, Joseph Cooper, who helped restock the auto supply store with equipment that looters dropped in the street outside.

“We thought they might have gone out of business, and then they said they were going to reopen, and that made us work even harder,” he said. “I’ve been working here for 4 1/2 years and I didn’t want to go down and get unemployment.”