Shuttle Endeavor : Transportation: For children who could really go places if they only had a ride comes Kiddy Kab, a south Orange County taxi service for youngsters on the move--and for parents too swamped to take them there.

It didn’t take Patricia Djokovich too many trips shuttling her own toddler through town to figure there might be a big market in cabbies for kids.

As legions of parents know only too well, driving their offspring to and fro--especially while balancing full-time work--can be a daunting task.

And today’s kids are really going places: from early morning day care to soccer practice to piano lessons.

Djokovich teamed up with sister-in-law Victoria Digby and in March of last year launched Kiddy Kab, which offers parents in South County transportation geared to kids.

Similar services are springing up elsewhere too.

As a matter of fact, cabs for kids may be the next big marketing niche created by parents juggling work and family.

According to the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates all transportation services, the growing number of applicants seeking permits to drive very young children has prompted the agency to tighten its oversight of what it calls “tot toters.”

“This is a growing new industry that the PUC felt needed more stringent requirements than for transporting adults,” says Fred Patterson, an attorney with the commission.

Some kid-oriented organizations build transportation into their service--such as picking up kids after school and taking them to a specific child-care site. Kiddy Kab and others of its genre, though, more closely resemble a taxi service.

Privately owned, it’s not affiliated with any specific organization or school. The vans are driven by Djokovich, Digby or one of their four hired drivers.

For parents--at home or at work--a kid cab can solve the problem of how to be in two places at once.

“Basically two parents have to work, but they want to give their kids everything they had when they were kids,” says Djokovich, whose 5-year-old tags along on taxi runs. “We offer them a way to do that.”

With a job in Downey and a husband commuting to Cerritos, Lori Clinton of Rancho Santa Margarita didn’t know how she would get her 5-year-old son to preschool three miles from their home.

“We have a housekeeper, but we didn’t want her driving Jonathon and this works perfectly,” she says. “Patty is very professional and she is a mom, so it feels like a personal service rather than a transportation department vehicle or a taxi. With her daughter in the back seat, there’s a real family feel to it.”

Parents who can’t drive often hop on board to accompany their children to games, gymnastics or school events.

“Much of the demand is from single parents,” says Djokovich. “Driving their kids where they need to be takes a lot of the pressure off. They tell us they didn’t know what they were going to do.”

The specialized cab service can even help keep things cool between ex-spouses who find face-to-face encounters with their former partners awkward during custody exchanges.

When they launched their business, Digby and Djokovich were both pregnant. It took $10,000 in start-up cash to get the vans rolling in what has become a family operation. Their father-in-law does the billing, mother-in-law does the bookkeeping and husbands handle the van maintenance.

And business is booming, says Djokovich.

She and Digby, who say they are getting 40 calls a day from interested parents, plan to add a fourth van to the fleet this fall and expand their South County service into Irvine, Tustin and Newport Beach by the end of the year. Eventually they would like to cover the whole county.

In screening new drivers, Djokovich and Digby said they look for someone established in the community who understands children--and is unflappable. “If they have problems on the road or have trouble locating a child, they need to stay calm during a crisis,” Djokovich says.

The state Public Utilities Commission is considering requiring “tot toters” driving children younger than kindergarten age to show that all its drivers and staff are licensed day-care providers or have completed at least 10 hours of child-care health and education training.

Currently, drivers for all ages need only meet the standard code that governs bus drivers, group tour drivers and other passenger carriers--which includes arrest-record checks and drug screenings through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Djokovich says she thinks the proposed regulatory change would be good for the growing industry--and underscore the sensitive nature of providing transportation for children.

“It will be safer for the kids and make the services more child-friendly,” Djokovich says. “Two out of our four drivers have [childhood education training] anyway, they’re ex-preschool teachers. It will be a little more difficult to screen drivers and it may mean raising their pay a little, but it will be better for the kids.”

Digby said that she and Djokovich and their drivers are happy to meet with the parents of passengers. Parents are welcome to go along for the first ride.

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On a typical taxi run at Kiddy Kab, the young passengers meet their driver outside their classrooms or other designated spot, then climb in the van and reach for hand-held video games tucked into the back to keep the trip fun. It’s not unusual for older kids to ask for a pickup down the street from school so nobody sees them climbing into a van with Kiddy Kab splashed on the side. Junior high is tough enough without a busload of toddlers beckoning you from the parking lot.

In fact, Djokovich notes, the name of the company will be changed to Cool Cab this fall for just that reason. Middle and high school students have as many or more transportation needs as younger students and the minivans will follow the market.

Kiddy Kab has a $35 enrollment fee and a three-mile minimum. The service costs $1.95 per mile for the first seven miles of each trip; after seven miles the cost drops to $1 a mile. A typical short trip to school and back costs about $12 a day, although fees vary for group rates depending on number of passengers and distance.

Most of the driving requests are for individual passengers, although to keep the vans filled and the costs down, the partners hope to concentrate on group transportation to and from a few schools.

Once on the job, drivers are accompanied by either Djokovich or Digby for several days until the route becomes familiar. Audiotapes recorded by the partners lead drivers through each day’s schedule, providing information on who needs to be picked up where, when and how.

Even so mix-ups are bound to happen, like the first day of school when a couple of middle school students couldn’t find the designated pickup spot where the van waited for them. Or the second day of school when a kindergartner followed his classmates onto the main school bus instead of waiting for the Kiddy Kab. Or the third day when a school “minimum day” meant an early dismissal, throwing off the day’s schedule.

Just like it does when parents do the driving.