Students Gain Full Range of Tools
After kicking life in a gang--and kicking himself for spending 57 months in prison--Che Avery was kicking up his heels Wednesday.
The plumbing student was named a scholarship winner at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. His prize: $2,500 worth of wrenches, pipe-cutters and other tools that will help him launch a career in his new trade.
The scholarship was one of two dozen awarded at the vocational school south of downtown Los Angeles by a brewing company. It was accompanied by a study commissioned by the brewer that warns of a skilled-labor shortage in the Los Angeles area.
The study, conducted by CommSciences Research Inc. of Los Angeles, indicates that shortages of qualified workers are no longer limited to such fields as computer software development.
Instead, a combination of new technology and a lingering stigma against so-called blue-collar work is leaving well-paying jobs unfilled in many manufacturing and construction fields. Other trades, meantime, are virtually recession-proof.
“If my computer goes down and my plumbing goes out at the same time, you know who I’m calling first,” said Victor Franco, an executive with the Miller Brewing Co., which sponsored the survey and financed Wednesday’s “Tools for Success” scholarships.
That kind of talk was music to Avery’s ears.
“The money I make is important. But more important is stability,” Avery said as plumbing classmates clapped him on the back and congratulated him. “I want security for my family.”
Avery, 27, of South-Central Los Angeles, said he learned the value of stability and family security the hard way, after falling in with gangs 10 years ago.
He was a bright teenager with loving parents and a 3.6 grade-point average at Beverly Hills High School, where he was enrolled through a school integration program. But he also had an adventurous streak that attracted him to the gang world.
He was involved with a particularly vicious gang--the Rollin’ 60s Crips--when three of his friends were killed in separate shootings. He was arrested for robbery in early 1991. Seven months later, Avery pleaded guilty to nine felony charges of armed robbery.
In mid-1992, Avery was profiled in a Times story that illustrated the fall of a kid who had everything going for him. Accepting the blame for his actions, Avery predicted his life was changed. “I am going to get through all this. I see this as test. I’m going to pass it with flying colors,” he vowed at the time.
On Wednesday Avery told of the carpentry and cabinet-making skills he learned in state prison. “So I wouldn’t say the time in jail was all wasted,” he said.
“But it’s a waste of life not to live up to your true potential,” he added. “I got my values twisted back then. I was impressing the wrong people for the wrong reasons. The turning point in my life was when I went to jail and my friends turned their backs on me. But my mom and my family were always there for me.”
His plumbing skills, coupled with heating and air conditioning skills he learned in other Trade-Tech classes, put him in a good position for the future, he said. For now, he supports himself and his 2-year-old son, Khari Tobias Avery, by working as a handyman, as his own father does.
“My father never took it to the next level,” Avery said. “My plan is to eventually obtain my contractor’s license and establish myself under the business name ‘Avery & Son Plumbing, Heating and Cooling.’ That sounds so good.”
Trade-Tech officials said those learning trades are lining themselves up for occupations that will be both lucrative and long-lived.
“There isn’t any computer that’s going to take over piping,” explained Stan Weinstock, a professor of plumbing who lives in North Hollywood. Experienced plumbers working locally earn about $30 an hour, he said.
Carpenters are paid similarly, according to Roger Dunn, a carpentry instructor who also lives in North Hollywood. “There is a lot of work available. We can place just about anyone in a job,” Dunn said.
Carole Anderson-Houlihan, a fashion-design professor who was named teacher of the year in the Tools for Success competition, said the same is true in her students’ field. She said she intends to use her $2,500 cash prize to start a fashion scholarship at Trade-Tech.
Other fields with shortages of workers include culinary arts and machining, according to Sharon Tate, Trade-Tech’s dean of academic affairs.
“The culinary program is so hot [that] students are recruited from here,” Tate said. “And the next hot field to be in is machinist, no question about it.”
