Chick Gearing Up for New Job : 3rd District: Weary Picus promises to help smooth transition after losing seat.

On the morning after, Councilwoman-elect Laura Chick was still accepting flowers from well-wishers while trying to decompress from six months of campaigning to unseat incumbent Joy Picus.

“I’m still pretty numb,” the 48-year-old Chick said Wednesday. “I need to get centered and balanced after being a candidate for so long.”

But new pressures began to build immediately, leaving little time for reflection or leisure for the woman who ousted her ex-boss by attracting 58.5% of the vote in Tuesday’s election.

At 7 a.m., only eight hours after she declared herself the victor in the 3rd District council race, Chick and her husband were awakened in their suite at the Warner Center Marriott Hotel by a phone call from a well-wisher--who also happened to be a potential office-seeker.

If that wasn’t enough to jolt Chick back to the realities of city politics, there was the urgent question of the first vote she will cast as a new council member--the vote to elect the council’s next president.

The council presidency vote “has already come up,” Chick sighed, even as she planned to take a few days off to attend a daughter’s graduation from UC San Diego, and to relax.

Still, Chick, who worked as a Picus aide from 1988 to 1991, said she is anxious to dig into her new chores.

“I’m very excited about working with Dick Riordan,” said Chick, referring to the city’s new mayor-elect.

During the campaign, Chick repeatedly refused to reveal her choice for mayor, contending that she wanted to be in a position to work with either Riordan or Michael Woo, the other mayoral candidate.

“I’m confident that Dick Riordan and I are going to have many common goals,” the councilwoman-elect said. “Riordan not only knows the Valley, but he’s comfortable with who and what the Valley is all about. And the Valley is comfortable with him. With Woo, I think the Valley was less comfortable.”

Despite plans to be a “strong ally” of Riordan’s at City Hall, Chick said she has qualms about two of the mayor-elect’s most controversial proposals for balancing the city’s budget while hiring more police officers.

Proposals to privatize the city’s garbage collection system and lease out LAX must be carefully reviewed, Chick said. “I’m no knee-jerk supporter of Riordan’s on these issues,” she said.

As Chick was gearing up for her busy new life inside City Hall, the 62-year-old Picus was reflecting on the past and on her future.

Time and again during Wednesday’s council session, the weary-looking Picus reminisced with City Hall staffers.

“Of course, I’m going to miss it here,” she said. “The people and the issues. At least some of the people and some of the issues. And I do love this building. It’s so beautiful.”

“You went out with such grace,” said one legislative analyst, squeezing her hand and recalling how Picus had asked her backers Tuesday--after it was apparent her bid for a fifth term was a lost cause--to support Chick, and how she had phoned the challenger to promise a smooth transition of power.

“I learned how not to do it from my predecessor,” Picus said with a smile, as she remembered how Donald Lorenzen, the incumbent she defeated in 1977, had left office.

“He locked the doors to the office, changed the keys, and when we took over there was nothing, not one piece of paper, no files, just the furniture,” she said.

With only three weeks left until June 30, when she becomes a private citizen at the stroke of midnight, Picus’ thoughts were on her family and her husband, Jerry.

“The first thing is that my three grandchildren, ages 3, 5 and 7, are arriving from Texas,” she told a reporter. “We’re going to have our hands full and then Jerry and I are going away for awhile. I don’t know where. I left that up to Jerry.”

But public life may be inescapable for Picus.

Less than 12 hours after her defeat, she was imagining new civic-minded mountains to climb.

“I expect to do some public policy advocacy work,” Picus said. “I have the experience to do it, and I’d probably want to do something for children. They’re our largest disadvantaged group--that’s enough to interest me in it already.”