Cal Ripken Isn’t the Only One on a Streak

In May, 1982, Baltimore Oriole shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. began his pursuit of Lou Gehrig’s 1939 major league record for consecutive games played. Tonight, barring the unthinkable, Ripken will break Gehrig’s record and fans at Baltimore’s Camden Yards will go wild.

In May, 1982, Gloria Acosta, recently arrived from the Philippines, began her new job as a nursing assistant at Glenridge Center, a residential facility for the developmentally disabled in Glendale. For eight years, she would not miss a day’s work. No accolades, no million-dollar paydays.

Five years ago, Acosta was recruited for the staff of the Easter Seal Society in Glendale. She hasn’t missed a day’s work there, either.

Acosta, 51, isn’t out to set any record. She is simply one of thousands of Angelenos who go quietly and efficiently about their work each day, unsung and unheralded. Their jobs are not glamorous, but they are important.

Acosta is program director for the nonprofit Easter Seal Society’s community access project in Glendale, through which 100 clients with multiple disabilities get pre-vocational training and learn independent living skills.

“They call me a workaholic, but I don’t think so,” says Acosta, a compact woman with short-cropped black hair and a ready laugh. While most of Los Angeles was enjoying the long Labor Day weekend, she was on the job--her regular weekend job at a facility for the disabled in Azusa.

Working seven days a week is not everyone’s idea of what life is about. Has Acosta ever, well, been tempted to call in sick? Just once? “Oh, no. It never comes into my mind. I love my work. I never take a sick day, ever.”

Her weekdays begin when the alarm buzzes at 5 a.m. If she sleeps in until, say, 6 or so, “My day is miserable. I don’t feel good all day.” She likes to be at her desk at 7:10, half an hour before starting time. Getting up early leaves time for cleaning, watering her plants, doing the laundry.

On those rare occasions when she feels a bit sniffly, Acosta says, “I just call my doctor, he gives me a prescription.”

“She’s never sick,” confirms Beverlyn Gonzalez, her supervisor at Easter Seal Society for four of the last five years. “There have been times when I’ve practically ordered her to go home, and she wouldn’t leave the building. She is dedicated and indispensable. She knows we wouldn’t know what to do without her. That’s why she’s here every day.”

Acosta supervises a staff of 25, none of whom tend to call in sick very often. They know the boss will be there.

She says she learned her work ethic growing up in the Philippines. “Our parents worked like that. And we were taught that the only inheritance they could give us was an education. You go to school so you have a good future.” One of 10 siblings, she earned a college degree. Acosta laments the loss of this traditional work ethic among many young Filipino Americans. “It’s the environment. Their parents have no time to teach the kids. They’re busy working so they say, ‘OK, here’s the money.’ ”

Naturally, retirement is something she prefers not to think about. She will retire, she says, at 65--not a day sooner. “I’ll go around the world. That’s my dream. At 65, you’re still young, but 75, forget it. You have arthritis.”

*

In June, on the last day of his annual vacation, a minor catastrophe befell David Wong, 59, a bellman at the Westin Bonaventure. He got sick.

A bleeding ulcer, said his doctor, who promptly ordered him to take a month off.

Until that happened, Wong, who came to the United States from Macao in 1966, figures he might have been out sick for all of 10 days during his 19 years on the job. He was late a few times, but be blames that on the bus, which he says sometimes fails to make its scheduled early morning pickup near his home on North Figueroa. “If the 6:15 doesn’t stop, I’m late.”

Wong’s workday is from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but once in a while he gets a 5 a.m. shift. “Then I take the 3 o’clock bus. If I take the 4 o’clock bus, I’m late five minutes.”

His philosophy about working is pretty straightforward. “If I don’t work, who supports us?” His wife is a full-time homemaker, and they have two children in college.

Besides, he likes his job. “The best thing, you see a lot of people. And they come in happy. You see movie stars. Clint Eastwood, he’s a nice guy. He gave me an autograph and said he was a part-time bellman a long time ago. Diana Ross, I take care of her many times. She shows me two small bags and gives me a $20 tip.”

And the downside of his job? “The big conventions. Hurry, hurry, take the bags. One thousand rooms check in, one thousand rooms check out. It makes the bellmen crazy.”

He is no hunk, and he is closing in on 60. But heaving those heavy bags around doesn’t worry him. He thinks he’s lucky to have steady work with health insurance. And, though it’s a minimum-wage job, with tips “you can survive.”

Wong is not obsessed with working and will turn down overtime to spend time at home. “I work eight hours, I go home. Every week, I get two days off. When I get vacation [three weeks], I take vacation.”

Though he’s feeling fine now, he’s still kind of annoyed about that ulcer. Nineteen years on the job, with one day sick about every other year--and then that. “I don’t feel good because I break my good record.”

*

When told of Cal Ripken’s pending record, Barbara Browning says, “I think that’s astounding . . . phenomenal. . . . Does he play with the Dodgers?”

Browning is not much of a baseball fan. But she knows a thing or two about devotion to the job. In 30 years on the staff of Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, she’s taken one sick day, back in the mid-’80s.

More precisely, she recalls, “It was about half a day. I had some abdominal pain and one of the doctors took me home. It was probably the flu.” There was one other time, in the early ‘70s, when she had outpatient surgery, but she took the half-day as vacation time.

“People say I’m a workaholic, but I don’t think I am. I like what I’m doing, so I just keep doing it.”

Fresh out of nursing school, Browning, who grew up in Upland, began working nights in a medical-surgical unit of the hospital. About five years later, she became an oncology nurse, working with terminal cancer patients. “That’s a real love of mine. I know it sounds weird, but I enjoy helping people deal with end-of-life issues because that has a lot to do with the quality of life.”

But it was a physically demanding job and early in 1990, when she was 46, Browning began thinking of a career change, “while I was still young enough to learn something different.” There was an opening for quality control director and she got the job.

Today, that job has expanded and Browning supervises a staff of 15. They assist doctors in reviewing quality of patient care and making recommendations for improvements and also solicit patient feedback on everything from hygiene standards to food--”The food is never good enough, of course, and never will be.”

Also under her supervision are the hospital’s infection control unit, employee health, discharge planning for patients and follow-up through community case managers who track rates of re-admission and how well patients follow doctors’ orders once home.

Browning loves her job and is so perpetually upbeat that, she says, “Everyone tells me I make them sick on Monday morning.”

She blames her work ethic on her guilt complex. “Remember when, if you stayed home sick from school, you couldn’t go out? Well, if I stayed home from work, I couldn’t go out at night.”

But she is not such a taskmaster that she won’t occasionally choose to indulge others if they have what she calls a “planned sick day.” In fact, she says, “They tell me I’m a pushover.”

When Santa Monica Hospital became Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center earlier this year, Browning lost about six weeks’ vacation time on the books. “They just paid us for it.” That was fine with her--she’s not one to indulge in long vacations.

She has another commitment, to which she devotes up to eight hours a week. In 1978, she and her pastor, the Rev. Robert S. Richards, incorporated the nonprofit Hospice in Home with a $10,000 private grant and a resolve to bring free in-home help to people dying of cancer (and, today, AIDS). Patients may need a wheelchair, or just someone to feed their dog.

Browning is already planning for her “retirement.” She wants to expand Hospice in Home. As hospital budgets continue to be slashed, she says, “the need is getting greater.”