Reaching Toward the Tools for Success
In South-Central Los Angeles, they called him B.T., short for Big Time, a reference to the amounts of crack cocaine he sold and the shiny gray Cadillac he drove.
Kent Lewis, 38, still uses that handle, but now only to describe how his life has changed. Big Time.
He had turned into a dope fiend and had smoked away most of his drug profits--which at one point, he said, reached $5,000 a day--when he joined an Urban League program created to teach automotive mechanics skills to unemployed inner-city residents.
Today, thanks to the perseverance of instructors who allowed him to continue the course even on days he was strung out on crack, Lewis has risen through the ranks of automotive specialties to become a master technician, the highest skill level attainable by a mechanic.
A good chunk of his paycheck from the Arco Smog Pro center in Reseda goes to mortgage payments on a house in La Crescenta where he lives reunited with his family--the wife and school-age children who were forced to leave him years before when his mood swings turned violent.
This week, the league’s Automotive Training Center on South Crenshaw Boulevard celebrated its fifth anniversary.
Created as part of Los Angeles’ efforts to rebuild itself after the 1992 riots, the center has taught more than 500 men and women to tune engines, install air conditioning and sell auto parts. About 85% of those graduates have found automotive jobs, according to Willie James, an employment advisor at the center.
The largest corporate sponsor, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., has provided more than $4 million for the program, which is run by a retired Army lieutenant colonel, Alfred Howard.
Most of the participants have been African American men, but graduates have also included Latinos, Asians and a few women. Those who attend must have at least an eighth-grade education, and be unemployed or underemployed (working 30 or fewer hours a week at another job).
Howard runs a tight ship. The center’s doors lock promptly at 7:30 a.m. for roll call, and students who miss more than three days of the 12-week course are expelled. Successful students must maintain an 80% average on all exams, their uniforms must be laundered and their appearance neat.
“If you can’t make it here, you won’t do it in the workplace,” said Howard, who says he accepts only 1 of 7 applicants to the free program.
Some students, like Kent, have blemished pasts with criminal rap sheets and spotty work records.
“But our employee-partners know we have a tough screening process,” said Howard. “They’re usually amenable to giving our guys a chance.
“If they’re model employees, it doesn’t matter what they’ve done last week, last month or last year.”
Of Kent, Howard said: “He’s a living example of what can be done. We merely provided him with the tools.”
At Friday’s ceremonies, Howard bellowed out the names of the 45 graduating students with all the command of a drill sergeant as the class, clad in black caps and gowns, rose to receive their diplomas.
Mayor Richard Riordan was there to laud the program and Doug West, president of the center’s board of directors, read a congratulatory letter from President Clinton.
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For many of the families cheering in the audience, the event was a rite of passage that made them whole again.
Take Michael McDougall, 25, who was forced to return to his parents’ home in Pico-Union by a severe depression and a crystal methamphetamine habit.
“I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going,” said McDougall. “I was never able to hold down a job because I didn’t like what I was doing.”
His father, a chaplain at the Union Rescue Mission homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles, encouraged McDougall, who liked to tinker with cars, to join the center.
The young man followed the advice and landed a job as a general mechanic at a Kmart automotive center in Riverside before graduating. Despite the 120-mile-a-day commute, both he and his family are elated.
“We’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” said a teary-eyed Murray McDougall as he stood next to his beaming son.
For Lewis, it has been a long road since the days he spent slanging (dealing) crack, or the nights he crawled into a cardboard box behind a liquor store and downed 99-cent bottles of Thunderbird wine.
He’s been sober for four years and has returned to his religious roots, starting each day with a prayer, he said.
“No matter how I side-stepped, I always knew which direction I was supposed to go,” said Lewis during a recent interview at work. “I love it here and will never go back.
“Thankfully, my employer was more interested in my talent than in my rap sheet.”
