A Sound Recruitment Plan

Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera has never met a smart ex-Marine I know named George Gutierrez.

They share similar personalities, though. Both are among the most earnest, hard-working men I’ve encountered. But if you’d met them in the 1980s, you’d have concluded they were headed in completely opposite directions.

A native of Boyle Heights, Caldera was a stellar student at Monte Vista High School who went on to West Point and, after military service, to both the law and business schools at Harvard. In 1992, he was elected to the California Assembly, serving five years in the Legislature before resigning to take a job with the Clinton administration. The president appointed him Army secretary last July.

Gutierrez, on the other hand, dropped out of Canoga Park High School in the early ‘80s. He started hanging around with a street gang, got into trouble and wound up in the custody of the California Youth Authority.

But Gutierrez is no loser. He turned his life around and today would fit almost anyone’s definition of a model citizen. He is, in fact, precisely the kind of young person Caldera had in mind last week when he proposed a potentially controversial change in the U.S. Army’s recruiting practices.

Caldera is concerned about a recent drop in Army recruitment. The service fell 2,300 recruits short in the quarter that ended last Dec. 31, and if the trend continues, the Army will fall short of its annual recruitment goal of 74,500 men and women.

To avoid future shortfalls, Caldera wants to make it easier for young people who don’t have high school diplomas to join the service. Among other things, he figures that change would make it easier for a growing population of young Latinos to volunteer for the Army.

Latinos have a long and honorable history of military service to this country. The example most often cited is the 37 Latinos who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. An evermore revealing statistic, I think, is that during the Vietnam War, when so many young Americans tried to avoid the military, almost 20% of our troops had Spanish surnames. At the time, Latinos made up only 5% of the national population.

Young Latinos still consider military service an attractive option, according to surveys conducted by the Pentagon. But despite their interest, Latinos are underrepresented in the armed services, comprising roughly 7% of active-duty personnel compared to 11% of the population.

Some Pentagon personnel specialists worry that part of the reason is that new, higher recruitment standards--particularly the requirement that 90% of Army and Navy recruits have high school diplomas--work against Latino youngsters. Latinos have a higher dropout rate than the general population, roughly 40%.

Some in Congress and the Pentagon worry, not without reason, that a young man or woman who can’t finish high school is also at risk to not complete a two-year hitch in the service. But Caldera replies that “the Army is an institution that should not write off young people,” and points out that for Latinos, cultural factors may play a role in dropout statistics. Many, for instance, leave school early not from lack of interest, but to help their families by going to work.

That is what Gutierrez, who is 37 now, did when he left Canoga Park High at 16. But he didn’t give up on school. Even while in CYA custody, he continued to study for a high school diploma.

But his real break came when he joined the Marines in 1986.

“The experience did a lot for me,” he says of a four-year stint that included duty on Okinawa and the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro. He not only earned the equivalent of a high school diploma, but got a bachelor’s degree in business while in the service.

“There were just so many opportunities that opened up for me because of my service experience,” Gutierrez says, including the chance to work for Michelin’s North American division after he left the Marines. “They look for people with military backgrounds. They believe the discipline you learn carries over into future work habits.”

Today, the former street kid from the Valley has a comfortable middle-class home in Greenville, S.C., where he is a sales manager for Michelin. And he’s as good a reason as I can think of to back Caldera’s plan to get the Army to take a chance on school dropouts who have potential.

I can’t pretend to be objective about Gutierrez, of course. He’s my brother-in-law.

But even if we weren’t related, I’d be proud of him. He’s a living example of the young men and women who could--if given the chance--use military experience to turn their lives around.