Shell Heeds Lessons Learned From Riots, Reaches Out to Inner City

Tyree Lowe was 12 years old when the acquittals of four white police officers in the Rodney King beating case touched off days of fury in Los Angeles starting April 29, 1992.

Now a senior at Locke High School in South-Central, Lowe is benefiting from the soul-searching that the riots inspired in one company badly hurt when angry residents stormed through the city.

Lowe is preparing for the corporate world at the Shell Youth Training Academy, a facility opened in 1993 next to a spiffy Shell service station at 8611 S. Western Ave., one of 58 Shell stations damaged in the rioting. (Eight of the stations burned to the ground.)

In addition to earning high school credit by taking weekly classes in computers, conversational Spanish and interview skills, Lowe also works at least 16 hours a week in Continental Cablevision’s human resources department. Shell pays half his salary under a partnership deal it has developed with 140 Southern California employers.

“We could have just rebuilt and continued business as usual,” said Robert A. Russ, manager of community relations for Shell’s Western region. “But we wanted to do something different.”

That’s an understatement. The riots, one could say, helped Shell Oil Products Co. develop a conscience. Executives realized that they had done little to build bridges to the community. Many stations in the central city were owned by Korean Americans, who, Russ said, had not reached out to hire the young African Americans and Latinos in their neighborhoods. Moreover, Royal Dutch Shell, the company’s parent, had come under heavy fire from anti-apartheid activists for doing business in South Africa.

On the other hand, a Shell study revealed that the owners of McDonald’s fast-food outlets--which were untouched by the mayhem--did get involved in the community and employed nearby residents, all as a condition of their leases.

“McDonald’s owners told me gang kids were protecting them during the violence,” Russ said. “We had to break this fear of hiring from the community. And we never had focused on inner-city marketing.”

Whether out of regret for these failings or fear over what might happen the next time, Shell executives pondered ways to get into the community’s good graces. Donating money to worthy organizations would get them only partway, they realized. They had to do something meaningful, something that would last.

Working with the post-riot recovery program Rebuild LA (later changed to RLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District, the company spent $2 million on a low-slung gray building tacked on to a refurbished station. Inside, on the desk of academy director Melba Jackson Carter, is a mission statement: to educate South-Central Los Angeles high school students while developing their employability skills.

The salaries of the two chief instructors are paid by the school district. Each desk holds a state-of-the-art computer. The program is geared to students with average grades but above-average motivation and determination. Shell initially committed $10 million to the program.

This June, the academy will graduate 166 students, bringing its total to 611. More than 90% of previous graduates are in college or have a job (or both).

Separately, Shell grants $100,000 in scholarship money each year, and it became the first oil company to start a minority financing program, arranging $2-million loans each for 10 new black and Latino station owners in California. It also encourages Korean American station owners to volunteer in the community, though Russ acknowledged that results have been mixed.

A wall in the academy holds a letter from President Clinton, and the program has received accolades from Mayor Richard Riordan and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The center also was one of five U.S. educational programs selected recently to be part of a federally funded study by Rand Corp.

Last fall, Shell opened an academy in Chicago, and it plans to build more in partnership with other corporations. The company also recently showed off the Los Angeles center to executives of rival Chevron Corp., which is considering a facility for the San Francisco Bay Area.

Among the Los Angeles academy’s star alums is Nicole Loudermilk, who grew up at 66th and Western and sports her long hair in a chic mass of tight braids. Remarkably poised at 21, Loudermilk is an international-air supervisor for United Parcel Service, attends El Camino College in Torrance and is the proud owner of a black 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier. Her dream is to walk a South-Central beat as a Los Angeles police officer.

Asked whether Shell has redeemed itself in the eyes of the community, Loudermilk said: “Yes. If, God forbid, we had another riot, I think Shell would be overlooked.”

Does your company have an innovative approach to building links with the community? Tell us about it. Write to Martha Groves, Corporate Currents, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Or send e-mail to martha.groves@latimes.com