CHANGING FORTUNES / THE VALLEY ECONOMY IN TRANSITION : Surviving the Fall : Partners in a Fraternity of the Downwardly Mobile

Chic and Audrey, Stephen and Nicki. They come from different generations, hail from far-flung corners of the professional world--the car dealer and engineering headhunter, the salesman and the accountant--but the irregular beat of an uncertain economy has forced them all into a joyless dance of major change.

Just like that, bankers took Chic Vandagriff’s Ferrari dealership and later seized the sprawling Encino home he had built up from the first brick, forcing him to leave the state. Suddenly without a job, Audrey Gallant walked away from the fast-paced sales world to eventually find satisfaction in operating a cappuccino machine at a Sherman Oaks coffee shop.

For four long months, Steven Kumagai didn’t have an office or a job--thanks to an October layoff. But he didn’t let that stop him. The 42-year-old still rose at dawn, donned a shirt and tie and methodically went about the business of regaining a niche in the work-a-day world.

Nicki Tonius already has a job--as a Woodland Hills bank manager. It’s just not the one she dreamed of 18 months ago as a USC accounting graduate ready to take the market by storm. But, for now, she knows that banking will just have to do.

Complete strangers, they are nonetheless partners in a growing fraternity of declining fortunes--among thousands of workers who fell from professional grace during a recession that gripped the San Fernando Valley for nearly four years.

Once upon a time, each had a solid grasp of a different rung on the career ladder--reveling in the dreams and ambitions that come with making money and having professional options. But the 1990s saw an end to that--recessionary years that hit white-collar middle managers particularly hard--dealing blows from which most still struggle to recover.

“People now see there is no protection against a recession of this magnitude,” said Katherine Newman, an anthropology professor at New York’s Columbia University and author of two books on the recession.

“Americans have always thought that there was no force large enough to tear down the truly motivated. But they’ve been sorely disappointed. The truth is, they’ve met their match.”

Indeed, during these demanding years, many have found themselves flailing away just to stay in place, putting dreams and once-strong ambitions on hold, dimming expectations of success and focusing on the choices that remain.

Despite good economic news nationwide, the recovery has lagged in California and the Valley, with the recession still exercising a wrestler’s grip on the psyche of many local residents. Just ask Chic, Audrey, Stephen and Nicki.

Theirs is a tale of four Valley professionals--a story of how their careers collapsed and how they have responded.

The going has been hard. They’ve begun a painful journey Newman calls becoming “downwardly mobile”--tumbling from the ranks of the middle class through loss of income, struggling to keep pace with friends and associates in pursuit of the California good life.

“A person’s response depends on whether they grew up through the Great Depression, the optimistic ‘60s or the conservative ‘70s,” Newman said. “It has to do with the national economy they went to school with, where they started out, their age and their gender. It has no doubt helped to see them through this.”

One noted author and lecturer on the American work ethic suggests that no one should take such harsh economic times personally, that the real issue is one of pure survival.

“For millions of people, this has been the Depression, just like we had back in the 1930s. And depressions take no prisoners,” said Studs Terkel, whose book “Working” chronicled a generation of American laborers. “Saying we’ve just been through a recession is like calling cancer a pimple.

“What has happened may not be anyone’s fault. People need to know that there’s something cockeyed with a system that hires you, uses you up and then just throws you away. It’s a cruel thing and it affects everyone.

“Once, these people were part of the ‘have’ group. Now money’s tight and they have less. They’ve moved from the haves to the ‘have-somewhats.’ And if this keeps up, we’re going to see more people--our friends, our bosses, ourselves--move into that bottom group, the ‘have-nots.’

“It’s scary. But it’s been real.”

End of Good Life

Chic Vandagriff stared into a cup of black coffee and pondered his fall from moneyed grace, how he went from being a millionaire to a morose man who anxiously awaits his monthly Social Security check.

Chain-smoking Kent 100s, he wondered how his $1.7-million dream home suddenly became a house of cards--foreclosed upon by an impatient lender and sold last fall to the highest bidder.

The tough economy closed down his once-successful Ferrari dealership in Hollywood, destroying his lavish lifestyle as well. At 65, he’s suddenly got too much time on his hands.

“The American dream blew up right in my face,” he sighed, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke. “I had it good. And now it’s gone.”

Vandagriff, experts say, is typical of an aging generation of Americans who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and rode a post-war boom to cash in on big profits in California real estate throughout the 1980s.

“When the roof fell in, a lot of people in this generation were able to ride out the calamity,” Newman says. “They had their houses paid off. Their children were gone. They weren’t risky in their investments. The ones who lost were the high-flyers who acted like the money was always going to be there.”

People like Vandagriff.

When the going was good, Vandagriff pushed all the envelopes: He raced sport cars. His restaurant bills topped $1,000 a month and he spent thousands more on art. And Vandagriff traveled: He liked the way people knew his name in hotels across Europe.

Then disaster struck.

The luxury tax was just one new government measure to hurt his business. Skittish banks retreated and Vandagriff lost his complicated financial backing. In the end, he said goodby to his dealership of 30 years.

After losing $1 million on some bad investments in Mexico and at home, Vandagriff found he couldn’t make his $5,000 monthly mortgage payment. In 1992, his home--appraised at $1.7 million the year before--sold for $600,000 in foreclosure.

Now Vandagriff waits uncomfortably for the end to come, noting with irony that today he couldn’t afford to pay even the taxes on the place, let alone utilities and a $100 bill for monthly sewer and water service.

The former millionaire, failed by the once rock-solid real estate market, admits he made numerous investment blunders. But he saves most of his anger for the politicians he says paved his road to ruin.

“California is stupid as hell,” says Vandagriff. “Most tax dollars go to giveaway programs like welfare. Meanwhile, the government taxed me to death. I’ve paid my last taxes here.”

So Vandagriff sold off the by-products of wealth. He threw a garage sale and peddled much of his collection of fine wines. The paintings have been sent back to the brokers in Europe.

In February, he walked away from his dream home. The house that is no longer his stood up well during January’s earthquake. “There was no damage, not the way I built that house, not a crack. My situation, now that’s a different story.”

Now he’s living in Las Vegas with a girlfriend, plotting his next fortune, considering the home-building market or some other investment. But one thing is for sure. “I’ll never go back to California,” he said.

Searching for Work

Unlike Vandagriff, Steven Kumagai never had a posh mansion or zippy sports cars--just a south Valley condo and a can-do attitude. To survive the hard times, he needed both.

Laid off in the fall of 1993 from his office products marketing job, the 42-year-old skipped the usual self-pity. He went back to work--looking for new work.

He knew the unemployment drill. In 1983, during the last recession, Kumagai spent seven months out of work. This time he began looking for other marketing jobs, re-evaluating his options, stretching the definition of career--even looking for work in fields such as travel consulting.

And he worked hard at remaining high profile, never missing a meeting of several business associations to which he belongs.

Meanwhile, he attended every social function he could manage, networking with possible new employers, volunteering for favorite charities.

Unlike other out-of-work friends, nobody caught Kumagai hitting golf balls at noon--dropping out socially as well as professionally: “I don’t spend my time watching Oprah, Jane and Sally and then saying at the end of the day, ‘My God, look how I’ve wasted my time.’ ”

Experts say Kumagai is typical of the early baby boom generation, professionals who graduated college in the late 1960s and ‘70s, finding an accommodating job market that eventually went bad.

“But they had a taste of economic rockiness of the early 1980s,” Newman said. “If they were on the ball, they learned something from all the pain of being out of work. They learned discipline.”

Indeed, Kumagai was a man with a plan.

Every day he woke up at 6:30 a.m. Even with little to do other than type job letters, he combed his hair, donned a shirt and tie.

Kumagai insisted on seeing the bright side. He even had time to scratch his acting itch, working as an extra in several films and television shows. The jobs made him feel good about himself.

“Kumagai’s story is the story of this recession,” said Richard M. Vogel, a local career management consultant. “He has the right attitude and is doing the right things to get work. He is keeping his personal life together.”

That regimen eventually paid off. A week after the January earthquake, Kumagai landed another job--this time as a salesman for a company that makes industrial packaging containers.

Even though he has now survived two recessions, Kumagai doesn’t want to test his luck with a third: “The thing I have anxiety about is, as we get older, it gets tougher to bounce back. I don’t know if I could do it again in my 50s. But I’d try. As long as I have a good mental outlook and physical health, I have tremendous confidence in myself.”

Hitting Bottom

For Nicki Tonius, the year she received her accounting degree turned out to be the year of the Big Letdown.

In 1992, the 31-year-old was a job-seeker who believed her life would be professional wine and roses. Job forecasters had assured the USC accounting graduate that she had done everything right: She had chosen the right university, even the right major.

Wrong.

By the time she graduated, companies that had guaranteed her employment while she was a student were already out of business. Would-be bosses were themselves looking for work.

Six months of searching produced no job offers--just a parade of rude prospective employers who would not return her calls: “I blame it all on the economy. I’ve worked hard. The employers just changed the rules on me.”

Experts agree.

“In the 1980s, some very bright people went into traditional jobs in search of security,” Newman said. “They believed that if they did the pragmatic thing, the future would be theirs. But that’s not how it panned out. Even the most conservative bettors were big losers.”

After months of rejection, Nicki Tonius knew she was in trouble.

“I was almost homeless,” she said. “I was two months behind in my rent with a huge college loan to repay. Funny--less than one year before I was on top of the world. Then I hit rock-bottom.

She summarized her frustrations last summer by scrawling a message on the wall of her North Hollywood apartment: “Sometimes, you can do everything right and still lose.”

So Tonius downshifted her expectations, seeking any job that would pay her bills. In July, she accepted an entry-level bank job and nicknamed herself “Teller Tonius”--joining the ranks of Southern California’s under-employed.

Today, as a branch manager making nearly $30,000 annually, she still considers herself a victim of cruel recessionary fate. But she isn’t alone.

For a while, she felt that many of her thirtysomething friends who landed accounting jobs were leaving her behind, splurging on expensive dinners and ski vacations she cannot afford.

She tried to keep pace, even if it meant eating dinner first at home and then joining her friends for coffee at that pricey restaurant.

Now some of those friends have lost their high-paying jobs. And Tonius herself said that she may feel the ax at her bank job.

She’s scared, but she’s surviving.

“My father always told me that I’m as tenacious as a bulldog,” she said. “When I grab onto something, when I put my teeth into it, I don’t let go until it’s dead or I’m finished eating it.”

Return to Freedom

Two years ago, Audrey Gallant was working as an engineering equipment broker, the latest in a succession of high-stress jobs that included engineering headhunter and a television programmer in Boston.

Then, it happened. She was laid off in September, 1992. Now she could kiss her old boss for letting her go, returning her freedom.

The two years have taught Gallant something about the nature of pursuing a career in America. For years, she did jobs she secretly hated, just because she saw the corporate ladder as something everyone had to climb.

Not Gallant. Not anymore.

Today, she works at The Coffee Roaster in Sherman Oaks. She looks forward to going to work, dealing with people she wants to see. Sure, she makes far, far less money, about a quarter of her former salary. But it’s like suddenly shedding 100 pounds: She feels great.

“Every night while working those other jobs, I went home with things on my mind--week after week, worrying about things I had to do the next day. Weekends were two days of freedom and I crammed everything I could into them to make the time off seem longer. Because I dreaded going back to work, I just pretended that I didn’t.”

Leaving the rat race meant no more pointless meetings. No more nylons.

“When I leave work, I’m out of here. All I have to do is do my job. I don’t sit here wondering if I’m going to get a pat on the back. I’m not waiting for my next raise or promotion.”

The move has not come without sacrifice. At age 33, she has sold off many belongings and has moved into a studio apartment near work. She has no credit cards and may even opt to go without health insurance.

“I found out that all the things I worked so hard to acquire, I really didn’t need in the long run. It’s like, I didn’t miss it. I just see the whole world differently.

“I’m happy. And no recession could take that away from me.”

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