The Core of the Corps : Martha Diepenbrock Forged a Team of Young Workers, but Now It’s Time for a Change

Nine years ago, Martha Diepenbrock agreed to start the Los Angeles Conservation Corps. But the banks wouldn’t back the idea. And employees didn’t come easily.

So Diepenbrock solicited donations and recruited employees to get the operation up and running. She turned the LACC into a $6.5-million-a-year enterprise that puts 300 inner-city youths to work year-round, visibly improves the community and has gained a reputation as one of the most successful youth corps in the country.

With so much time invested in one ambitious project, stepping down had to be difficult.

“I thought about my decision to leave the corps for a long time,” said Diepenbrock, 41, who will leave the LACC at the end of the month.

“It wasn’t a short-term decision. I thought about ways in which I could change the job and keep it, I thought about taking a sabbatical and coming back, but I decided that it was time to leave. It was just time for a change.”

Deputy Director Bruce Saito, who has been at the corps as long as Diepenbrock, has stepped in as acting director until a new executive director can be hired.

It was 1986 when U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor asked Diepenbrock, then working at the National Assn. for Service and Conservation Corps in Philadelphia, to head the nonprofit organization, which is funded by government dollars as well as private donations. Kantor envisioned the corps as a way to provide work experience to young adults while enhancing the community. Diepenbrock accepted his challenge, but planned to spend only two years in the job.

In the beginning, she did everything from organizing the corps’ mandatory morning calisthenics and roll call to preparing a monthly budget. And Diepenbrock often left her office at an old firehouse on Main Street to join in such jobs as planting trees, removing graffiti and cleaning up after the 1992 riots.

The corps also helped with sandbagging after the recent floods, but its most noticeable work is perhaps the more than 80 murals painted at elementary schools and other buildings citywide. The youths have also cleaned up parks, including Topanga State Beach.

But as the organization and its staff grew, Diepenbrock’s duties became increasingly administrative, filled with meetings and telephone calls. A second center opened in East Los Angeles in 1993, and the corps collaborated on numerous projects with such other community groups as Building Up L.A. In 1993, President Clinton visited the LACC, using it as one of the models for the national service program Americorps.

Diepenbrock is happy about the corps’ success, but says her favorite part of working for an organization is setting it up.

Before the LACC, she helped jump-start the City Volunteer Corps in New York City, organized a youth corps exchange program at Philadelphia’s NASCC, and worked for the California Conservation Corps as a fire center director, program coordinator and membership recruiter.

“I like the get-it-up-and-going process of making an organization work,” Diepenbrock said. “I like the challenge of improving the organization.”

Challenges have always played a role in Diepenbrock’s life. Slender and athletic, she has ventured to Nepal, where she climbed a 20,000-foot peak, and through the Sierras in Northern California. Closer to home, she bikes and runs the trails of Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades.

“Mountain climbing requires a lot of concentration and focus,” Diepenbrock said. “There’s a lot to learn in the context of challenging yourself in nature.”

Around the corps, she is fondly known as Martha D., or M.D. For many, she has been a mentor and role model.

Edward Monge needed some direction after high school and found it in the corps. He started, as everyone does, as a field worker on community projects, rising through the ranks to team leader in charge of Clean and Green, the LACC’s largest program, which recruits junior high schoolers to pick up litter, paint murals and promote recycling.

Now 24, Monge plans to be a teacher and has enrolled at Cal State Northridge. He says he couldn’t have done it without the skills and motivation he gained through the corps.

As operations service manager, John Smith, 25, trains new corps members in the use of various tools and keeps the vehicles running. “Martha D. taught me a lot on a professional level,” said Smith, who started as a corps member four years ago. “She helped me gain management skills. . . . I gained a lot by working with her.”

When Diepenbrock leaves, he said, it will feel as if a family member is going off to college. “I think by Martha leaving, we’re really going to see how much she taught us. She’s leaving behind her experience and I think that’s really going to come out.”

Diepenbrock’s future is still up in the air. She plans to travel, and has thought about finishing college; she dropped out at 19 when a field study project organizing lettuce boycotts for the California Farm Workers Union turned into a full-time job.

“I want to take the time to see what’s out there,” she said.