Learning Life’s Lessons : CREW Workers Head Outdoors to Keep Out of Trouble

The sun beat down, and the bugs were relentless.

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For a moment, Mark Schultz quit digging at the steep mountainside with a steel hoe, lifted off his hard hat and surveyed his surroundings: a deep canyon in the heart of Los Padres National Forest filled with sagebrush, juniper and spruce, hawks, rattlesnakes and deer.

“Working out here has taught me that there’s some beauty in the world,” said the 19-year-old Ventura resident, who says his criminal record dates back to age 9.

“It’s taught me that there’s more to life than gangbanging.”

Schultz is one of more than 20 young laborers at Concerned Resource & Environmental Workers--a nonprofit agency that hires 14- to 21-year-olds to work outdoors. While not many have criminal records, all are there to learn a few of life’s lessons, according to CREW founder Paul Starbard, 36.

“All kids are at risk,” said Starbard, whose firm pays its way with government grants and private donations. “We try to keep them out of trouble by giving them a challenge, a sense of belonging and something to be proud of.”

Four years ago, Starbard quit his Ojai contracting business to form CREW, a job for which he earns only about $15,000 a year but that addresses two of his main concerns.

“The environment needs help and our young people need help,” he said.

CREW puts young laborers to work mostly on weekends and vacations until summer rolls around. Then it shifts to 40-hour weeks. Starbard estimates that about 300 young people have passed through the program since it began in 1991.

Armed with picks, hoes, hammers and nails, CREW kids--as Starbard affectionately calls them--repair forest trails, build nesting boxes, paint over graffiti, clean up parks. They are paid between $5 and $8 an hour.

“It would take the Forest Service years to accomplish what Paul and the CREW are doing in one summer,” said Leslie Jehnings, a landscape architect with the service.

CREW’s annual budget is between $60,000 and about $120,000, Starbard said. “Sometimes, I only have money to hire two kids; other times, as many as 100. Our dream is to have consistent funding.”

The organization is based in Ojai but is now run from a Rose Valley work camp, where Starbard lives.

This summer, CREW was handed a new mission. It was given additional federal funding by the Job Training Policy Council of Ventura County to put unemployed county residents to work repairing flood damage in the national forest. For the season, half of CREW’s 40 workers are adults.

One recent afternoon, Schultz, who has worked for CREW off and on for four years, was with the crew’s adult workers in the wilderness just off California 33 north of Ojai.

Beside him was a new friend, Carlos Lovio of Oxnard.

CREW is keeping Lovio out of jail, literally. He was arrested for violating his probation and recently spent his 18th birthday in jail. He’s been spared more time because of his employment.

“I got myself a good job,” said the former Oxnard gang member, who acknowledges once selling drugs. “You can’t get arrested doing this kind of work.”

More than two miles up the same canyon was a second crew that had camped out for two days, repairing the trail from the top down.

Leaving for the up-canyon team, Starbard and his assistant, Ojai botanist Lanny Kaufer, followed a hard-to-track path full of brush and pitfalls. Along the way, they described the need for their program.

“There’s a huge labor pool of kids out there with tremendous amounts of energy and nothing to do,” Kaufer said. “We try to teach them what it means to be responsible citizens.”

Sometimes the lessons take on a personal nature. Starbard is often asked questions about sex, drugs and family problems.

“I end up talking a lot about using condoms and how to treat someone of the opposite sex with respect,” he said.

After an hourlong hike, Starbard reached his second crew. Three tents were staked beneath a big oak tree--the only shade around. Attasalina Tuggle sat near a sack of potatoes and prepared a lunch of canned tamales and fresh guacamole.

It was hot, and the workers were dirty. But no one complained.

“This is the first job I could find that isn’t at a Taco Bell and pays more than minimum wage,” 18-year-old Tuggle said as she mashed avocados against a tin plate.

Her boyfriend, Rob Dews, is also taken with the scenery.

“I go to people’s offices and see pictures of a canyon like this up on the wall,” he said, pointing to the steep ridges above. “But this is my office.”