Girls Get a Glimpse of the Working World : Education: ‘Take Our Daughters to Work Day’ seeks to widen career paths. The event is cute, but also gets down to business.

At the restaurant Campanile, chef-owner Nancy Silverton is explaining the difference between Italian parsley and regular parsley to five would-be chefs, ages 6 to 11. “Let’s go to the walk-in and pick out some vegetables,” she said as the girls trailed behind her, some so short that their white chef’s jackets look like nightshirts.

Thursday’s culinary lesson was just part of Take Our Daughters to Work Day--L.A.-style. On this day, girls--and a few boys--got to rub shoulders on-the-job with physicists and super-agents, dock workers and electricians, corporate lawyers and trendsetters.

Naturally, this being Los Angeles, the cameras were rolling. Fox television reporter Barbara Schroeder, on hand to chronicle the Campanile feast, did her stand-up with her 4-year-old daughter, Glenn, in tow. Glenn, cradled in Schroeder’s arms and wearing a shade of hot pink lipstick that matched her dress, grinned deliciously, stuck the microphone in maitre d’ Claudio Blotta’s face and asked, “What does a maitre d’ do?”

“It’s so cute,” Schroeder said later. “The ‘awww’ factor is very big today.”

And so was the event. No question about it, it was girls’ day out. Everywhere you looked, from one edge of the continent to the other, there were girls at work.

At BP America’s headquarters in Cleveland, girls mixed chemicals to make slime. At the Aurora Fire Department near Denver, girls wrestled with fire hoses. At the New York law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, girls sat through a seminar called “Thinking Like a Lawyer.”

At the White House, daughters of Administration officials and girls from local schools roamed the halls and ate sandwiches on the South Lawn, served by White House butlers in black ties.

“We want to say to the young women of our society: You can grow up to do anything, to be anything, to achieve anything that your imagination and your effort and your talent will let you achieve,” President Clinton told them.

Last year, the nationally observed Take Our Daughters to Work program--the brainchild of the Ms. Foundation--was a small undertaking in some Los Angeles offices and nonexistent in others. This year, the Hollywood Policy Center, a nonprofit, entertainment-community group, coordinated the event on the West Coast, spreading the word with a vengeance.

Movie studios and law firms and science laboratories held special programs. The event moved beyond an intimate family affair and became an outreach program. Some companies brought girls by the busload from schools--particularly from lower income areas--to serve as daughters-for-a-day.

“We sent mailers saying try to find girls who might not get the chance,” said Kathy Garmezy of the Hollywood Policy Center.

“Most of us who have daughters, they’ve been around this stuff their whole lives,” said actress Jill Eikenberry, who took a 16-year-old girl from Penny Lane, a residential treatment program in Northridge for emotionally handicapped girls, to work with her on the last episode of “L.A. Law.” There are so many people who don’t want to do what their mothers do or who don’t have role models. It’s nice to be able to do this for them.”

At the Hollywood-area yard operated by the city’s department of street lighting, girls took 25-foot-high rides in the “bucket”--escorted by their protective fathers. (Yes, there is one woman, an electrical craft helper, and she went up with her niece.)

“How do I look?” asked Michelle Long, 14, after donning yellow helmet and orange safety vest. “Official,” said her father, assistant electrician Tim Wallace.

Katie Martin, on the other hand, was not particularly enthused by the peek that her father, Lt. Russ Martin, gave her into the Santa Monica Police Department, where he is executive officer in charge of operations. For one thing, she said, the department’s sunrise briefing was “the most boring thing” in the world.

But the 9-year-old said her day picked up when she hooked up with mom, Santa Monica park ranger supervisor Diane Martin, who arranged for a tour of the city jail. (It was empty.) Then came the highlight: the city animal shelter. “I love animals,” said Katie, who is now considering a life with the park service. But then again, she said, maybe she’ll just be a movie star.

There were other girls throughout the city getting a glimpse of inner sanctums that belonged to neither of their parents’ worlds.

Organizers said the second annual Take Our Daughters to Work program--expected to attract 3 million participants nationwide--exposes young girls to the world of career options and begins to counteract the stunning loss of self-esteem that many girls undergo in adolescence, which has been reported in well-publicized recent studies.

The day did not pass without controversy, though: There were complaints that it excluded boys. For that reason, Chrysler Corp. said it was not taking part and was discouraging workers from bringing daughters to the office. Other companies, such as Rockwell International and First Interstate Bank, dubbed the day: Take Our Children to Work.

Some boys complained directly to their mothers. “My son said, ‘Take me to work’ ” said Eikenberry of her 12-year-old son. “But he gets to go to work with me all the time. I said, ‘This is a thing about girls. Many girls feel they don’t have the opportunities that boys do.’ ”

Ditto for Silverton’s 9-year-old son. “I think he feels today that girls get more special things,” the chef said. “I told him that traditionally it was expected that men would ordinarily get a career. This whole day is for daughters to see what their mothers do.”

Or to see what their mothers want them to do.

Attorney Kim Wardlaw, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers, said a colleague’s secretary asked Wardlaw to shepherd her daughter around. “She said, ‘I don’t want her to be a secretary. I want her to be a lawyer,’ ” Wardlow recounted. “I perfectly understood. My mother was a bookkeeper and a secretary, and she refused to let me take typing because she wanted me to be her boss.”

Some parents actually were ushering their daughters around in the hopes of discouraging them from creating a family tradition. The ploy didn’t work for Los Angeles Police Detective Wayne Dufort, who brought his 14-year-old daughter, Nicole Dufort, to the Van Nuys station.

“I want to be a detective just like my dad,” she declared. “He goes around and looks for criminals. He goes from house to house looking for gang members. I think it’s fun and it’s exciting,” said Nicole, who said she doesn’t want to be a nurse, like her mom, because it’s too boring.

Some girls stepped into completely alien worlds.

Girls from Washington Irving Middle School outside Eagle Rock, for example, rushed to sign up for the trip to Creative Artists Agency, one of the most powerful talent agencies in town, although few of them had any idea what an agent does. Once ensconced in the art-filled interior, they were treated to words of wisdom--women agents and producers talked about how they made their way in Hollywood--a tour of the building, lunch in a conference room and even a sampling of scripts.

During lunch, agent Michael Ovitz, one of the founders of CAA, appeared at the doorway to the conference room to greet the girls and ask if they had any questions.

“Michael started in a mailroom--just like the one downstairs,” CAA’s Anna Perez told the girls.

“What do you do now?” said Stephanie Gima, 14.

“Uh, I’m not really sure,” Ovitz said with a chuckle. He then gave a more serious overview. “We’re in all areas of the entertainment business,” he explained.

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, girls met with women scientists and heard stories of how they grew up hating math, of college science classes with 70 men and three women, and of telling guys at parties that their major was art in an effort not to intimidate them.

“I didn’t think of women (in JPL) as much as older men who’ve been doing something with white coats and carrying around a big notebook,” said Laura Jones, 11, whose father, Ross M. Jones, is an aerospace engineer supervisor.

At other offices, the opaque was made more comprehensible.

In San Pedro, 14-year-old Erin Boyd strapped herself into the front passenger seat of a Jet Ranger 206 helicopter and got to give commands. “Air 170 clear,” she said to the radio voice. “170 Roger,” the voice said to her. As commanding officer of operations for the Port Police, her father, Lt. Ronald Boyd, routinely takes a ride in the airship to monitor the port for hazardous waste spills or cargo theft. Having his daughter at work “takes some of the mystery out of dad, especially a dad who has a mysterious job,” Ronald Boyd said.

Then the copter landed.

“You did pretty good,” Ronald Boyd said to her daughter. “Some policemen, it takes them a lot longer to show them how to do this.”

Times staff writers Scott Shibuya Brown, Ted Johnson, Chau Lam, Greg Miller, Lucille Renwick and Renee Tawa contributed to this story.