Growing Up on the Job--Fast
Ja’Quan Combs and James Stephens, two teenagers from Los Angeles, sat in a bank vice president’s office Friday morning in Sherman Oaks and studied the week’s receipts from 21 Cal Fed branches. Stephens, in particular, did not like what he saw.
Half the branches had not sold a single stock or bond this week. “Too many zeros,” Stephens wrote in a note that would soon be blast-faxed to all the branches. And why didn’t two Century City branches process any new consumer loan applications this week? “WHO IS AT HOME?” the 14-year-old eighth-grader wrote. “PICK IT UP!”
Combs, 15, was more cautious. “Don’t be too hard, James,” he said, a little sleepily. “I hope no one gets fired over this.”
Mentorship programs and “Take a Child to Work Days” may have made children a common sight in the nation’s workplaces, but few such days are as intense or fast-paced as the nine hours Combs and Stephens spent Friday with Cal Fed First Vice President Raphael Henderson.
The long day was part of the fourth “Take a Youth to Work Day” organized by the New Leaders, a nonprofit organization. Founded in 1995 out of concern about the declining enrollments of black men in college, New Leaders arranged for 149 African American men to take teenage boys from 13 area schools to work.
Some youths tagged along with 16 officers of the California Highway Patrol. A couple hung out with former Laker guard Michael Cooper. But organizers said Henderson’s plans were by far the most involved.
With the boys in the back seat of his black Mercedes-Benz, Henderson shuttled among a half-dozen bank branches as he conducted a running seminar on business sense and black pride, interrupted occasionally by the Mozart-themed rings of his cell phone.
They wrote full-page teller evaluations. They counted money delivered by armored trucks. And they had a power lunch at the City Club, 54 floors above downtown Los Angeles, dining with an African American doctor and a money manager. For two hours they talked of stocks and bonds, affirmative action and Shaquille O’Neal’s new contract.
By the end of the day, it hardly seemed strange when Stephens handed his resume to Henderson.
“Poor guys, you’ve got to deal with Raphael,” Beverly Hills branch employee Sandy Smith had warned the teenagers early in the day. “He’s serious. This won’t be a field trip.”
Raised in the mid-Wilshire district by a father who worked at the post office, Henderson graduated from Fairfax High School and USC. After a brief try at law school, he instead became a stockbroker, catching on at Cal Fed 10 years ago. He now oversees all 21 of the bank’s branches west of downtown, looking after 297 employees and $1.5 billion in assets.
“$1.5 billion, men,” he tells the teenagers for emphasis.
Combs and Stephens were not supposed to be assigned to the banker, but Henderson makes his own rules. As participants in “Take a Youth to Work Day” gathered Friday morning at a Baldwin Hills theater to get their assignments, Henderson picked out the only two wearing suits. “Those are my kind of kids,” he said, running over to them.
“Let’s go!” he said, motioning to the exit. “Let’s go!”
While they were dressed the same way, the two teenagers, who did not know each other, were hardly a match.
Stephens immediately ingratiated himself. He is a strong eighth-grade student at Calvary Christian Academy in Gardena; his father is a manager at a Bank of America branch, and his mother works for Pacific Bell. He chatted up Henderson about his stock portfolio, and the merits and drawbacks of online banking.
He even brought along his resume, two pages, on bond paper. It mentions his Boy Scout career, the seventh-grade honor roll, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People life membership, even his kindergarten record at Trinity Lutheran in Inglewood.
Combs, a sophomore at a magnet school on the USC campus, was more hesitant. His mother, a day-care provider, was widowed when he was 3. Combs lives in South-Central with his mother and stepfather, an oil refinery worker.
He told Henderson he was set on being a pro basketball player. He seemed flummoxed when the banker demanded to know his backup plan.
Combs drove Henderson to distraction with talk about athletes Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter, and the performer Dr. Dre. At one point, Combs announced that he would have preferred to spend the day with Michael Cooper.
“Who is running for president?” Henderson asked with exasperation during one drive between bank branches. Combs knew the names, but neither boy could answer when the banker asked what George W. Bush’s current post is.
“One of the great concerns I have is that you all can talk about Dr. Dre and his career in complete detail,” Henderson thundered, with Combs rolling his eyes in the back seat. “But you don’t know that the Republican presidential nominee is the governor of Texas!”
Henderson’s pressure seemed to make a difference. At lunch, Combs’ perspective turned for good when he first glimpsed the panoramic view of Southern California offered by the City Club. “Wow, this is tight,” he said. “This is the kind of place you see at a movie.”
The two teenagers glanced at the long menu and ordered cheeseburgers. And they listened as two friends of Henderson’s--Dr. Jonathan Heard, a trauma surgeon and faculty member at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, and Eric L. Holoman, vice president and regional manager for Wells Fargo’s private client services--talked bluntly about being black professionals.
“If you have success, you will be in places where you are the only black face,” said Holoman. “You will represent your race.”
Heard told a skeptical Combs that there are more black surgeons than NBA players. “You must find your talent, and your performance must be excellent,” Heard said. “You must overcome stereotypes, and do better than we did.”
After a long day of banking, Henderson drove the teenagers to a rally at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles to conclude “Take a Youth to Work Day.”
“I’ve never had a day like today,” said Combs, who spoke at the rally. “I couldn’t imagine it.”
Stephens, exhausted at the pace, nodded off in Henderson’s back seat. But Combs chatted with his new friend the banker. The young man was wide awake.
