Some True Stories About Real People

Derek WernerReal Estate Developer to U.S. Army Enlisted Man

Derek Werner was born December 1, 1958 in South Gate, California. He currently lives in Bogota, Colombia and travels extensively through South America. He is now working half time as a consultant to the US Embassy while his wife, Jennifer, works in the Defense Attaché office of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Derek investigates fraudulent documents.

When I go out of college, all I wanted to do was make money. But my parents had always raised my sister and me to give something back.

I grew up in Costa Mesa, California; my father was a Psychology faculty member at a local community college. I eventually earned a degree in Economics at Claremont College in Pomona where I met my wife, Jennifer, who received her degree from Scripps. I became a CPA and received my MBA from UCLA. At the time, I went into business school so I could make more money.

Both my parents have advanced degrees, my mother with a Masters in Education and my father with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. They met while attending USC and dated for seven years. Dad was born in Norway and Mom in Nebraska. My sister is four years my junior and teaches first grade in Whittier. My family traveled a great deal and taught us the value of discipline. We were easy kids to raise and had a pretty happy family.

Shortly after graduation from Claremont, I was hired by Peat-Marwick working primarily with real estate development and investment banking. After two years with them, I entered the UCLA MBA program with an emphasis in Finance and Management. Immediately after I earned my degree, Jennifer and I got married, and we toured the world for nine months, which initiated our travel interests. Returning from this tour, I worked for Trammel Core Company, which was at one time the largest real estate developer in the world. We bought land, built industrial parks, and held them for profit and gain. At that time the Japanese were buying a lot of real estate in the U.S. Jennifer, in the meantime, was working for Xerox and then did some medical sales.Jennifer and I have been married for 16 years. I met my wife in 1979 and bought a house in Newport Beach. We’ve rented it since we’ve been in the army. We both joined the army in 1989 and we both took a $12,000 per month pay cut – it was significant to us. When I first got

out of college I got a $65,000 bonus my first year working. I worked three years as a CPA, two years as an MBA, and then three years in real estate development. We’d been lucky, had made some money, and talked about how we could serve in some way. One day Jennifer announced that on Saturday she’d invited an Army recruiter to our house. Then on Wednesday they’d meet a Marine representative and after that an Air Force person. This was in 1988.

We were 30 years old when we enlisted in the Army. They had a program for married couples in the Army, and despite the fact that they were the opposite of “shoot-‘em-up-gun-type people”, we enlisted. We were able to go to Monterey in the Language Institute where we spent six hours each day learning Polish. They paid off all my graduate student loans plus an $8,000 bonus to sign. We wanted to keep our house in Newport Beach, so we couldn’t afford to join the Peace Corps. We found ourselves in Fort Jackson, South Carolina in basic training. It was really interesting. I was working guard duty with this kid from New York City. I asked, “What were you doing before?” He said, “Dealing drugs.” He asked me, “What were you doing before?” I said I was dealing in real estate and he said, ‘Oh, pretty much the same thing, huh?’”

We spent a year in Monterey, California. While in basic training, a guy was doing a report on married people in the Army. He said the article was going to go worldwide. Things snowballed and we ended up on an NBC program. These tapes were sent to Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense and General Verona, the Army Chief of Staff. They asked us if we’d be willing to do a media tour. We ended up on CBS in New York and CNN followed us around the country. My parents’ friends asked what are they doing? We had a feature piece done on us and we went to Germany for a year. We went to Warsaw and we got into an embassy program. It consists of 60 people whose assignment is to move from embassy to embassy. It’s a civilian clothes assignment. At the end of the four-year tour of duty, we decided that I would quit while Jennifer stayed on Embassy Attaché Duty. We enjoyed living around in Germany and Poland. We’ve had a great time ever since. We travel a lot. Since I ended my enlistment, I’ve been doing consulting work overseas. I’ve followed Jennifer and gotten all of her benefits plus I’ve got seventy thousand tax-free income.

Unfortunately, I had a melanoma discovered one-and-a-half years ago, so I’ve been taking it easy. When in Russia, I had to make payroll and pick up large clumps of cash. With all the organized crime in Russia, this was a rather dangerous assignment. So I’m not working full time now. I deal with fraudulent bank statements and phony visas. Seventy percent of the documents presented to the embassy are fake. We love

to travel and we get both Colombian and U.S. holidays. I plan the trips while Jennifer works.

Our change was something that was built in. The military filled our bill for travel and they treated us quite well. Being as educated as we were, we were very much outside the profile of their typical recruit. As linguists we hardly ever worked overtime and we were regarded like pilots. We were supposed to stay sharp. We’re now at our fifth embassy in nine years. We like a lot of the third-world countries. We’re scheduled to go to West Africa in the near future.

The biggest adjustment was all the extra free time we suddenly had. The basic training was even OK though I wouldn’t want to do it over again. We kept journals at the time. I guess the bureaucracy was a great adjustment to us. You couldn’t just make things happen. You’d have to go through a hierarchy.

Having your finances in order can give you a great deal of freedom to make change. If someone’s going to make a big change, both spouses must take part in it. We decided not to have kids since we were going to Kazakhstan, where it’s not so easy to raise children. Both people have to agree 100%.

My ego is not caught up in my job. We have friends who make lots of money, but that’s not important to us. We’re happy we had our degrees. We’ve been all over the world. We plan to retire and move back to Newport Beach in nine years or so. We’ll both be fifty at that time. We’ll be set financially. We think we know what’s important in life. We never thought we’d stay in the Army, though. That’s been a big surprise.

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George RothmanDentist to Computer Programmer to Playwright

Born in 1933 in Strasbourg, France, George lives in Irvine with his wife. He has two adult children, a son and daughter. He has written 7 plays, is at work on an 8th, and his first play entitled, “Where Were You on Your Ninth Birthday?” was shown this year at Orange Coast College. The play reflects his Jewish heritage as a son who escapes imprisonment by the Nazis while his parents were taken away to their deaths. He later lived with his great-uncle in Hollywood whom he refers to as his father.

During the war, I lived in an orphanage. A couple who took it upon themselves to support me oversaw my welfare. It was too dangerous for them to allow me to live with them because of my Jewish heritage, so I lived in the orphanage, but they watched over me. I was nine at the time my parents were arrested by the Nazis. I was ill and in the hospital with a kidney ailment or we would not be having this conversation today. That was my window. I was not taken away. To this day, I don’t know why they hid me

After the war I moved to live with my great-uncle who supplied cloth for the Hollywood movie industry. I now refer to him as my “father”. My “father” had no formal education beyond high school but he was aggressive and successful in his profession. We lived quite well. I was thirteen when I came into his life and there were no ifs, ands, or buts about going to college - - you went. Also, I was expected to enter a profession – doctor, lawyer, or dentist. I chose dentistry, attended UCLA as an undergraduate and Case Western in Cleveland, Ohio for my dental training. I completed my studies in 1960. Then I joined the Navy. I had been drafted, but the Navy let me defer my enlistment until I finished my education. I was in the Navy and got married while enlisted.

In 1963, I was released and set up a dental practice in Manhattan Beach, California. At first the business was interesting, but after a few years I became disillusioned with the work of a dentist. I didn’t like the stress, the work didn’t fulfill my interests, and I didn’t like dealing with pain. By the time I felt this way about my work, I had my family. Since I considered the family THE most important thing in my life, I continued dentistry despite my dissatisfaction with this career. And after twenty years practicing I avoided the most common pitfalls of dentistry – drug addiction and affairs. Dentists also have a very high percentage of suicide. Since I disliked it so much, I distracted myself with activities that were interesting. I realized my family was what people strove for, and I had that, so I stayed with dentistry for twenty years.

I wasn’t an entrepreneur-type of dentist. For me it was just a job. My wife substituted as a teacher because the children were growing up and she wanted to get out of the house. I would get the children ready for school. Manhattan Beach was a very nice little community at the time. I could walk to my office. We could pick up shoes for the kids and pay the shopkeeper later. In the mid-70’s, my wife went to USC to get a degree in Library Science. She worked for a small Catholic girl’s school in Inglewood.

At this time I’m about forty-years-old and my discontent with dentistry got real strong. I thought about leaving every day so I tried to distract myself. I got very involved in writing, attending workshops and classes at UCLA. I was writing novels mainly for the distraction and to keep the creative side of me active and happy. It also put me in touch with interesting people I had more fun with. I started feeling the need to write after I’d been married for a couple years. I would send my stories out to magazines. I was also interested in music. I earned a degree in music from Cal State Dominguez Hills to formalize my knowledge of music. I learned the piano and guitar. I love opera and I always come home to Pucini and the Romantics. Verdi I like, but he’s not Pucini.

In 1976, I decided I couldn’t continue running my practice so I sold it and began working for other dentists. Simultaneously, my wife wanted to work as a librarian in the public school system. She began applying. Soon after she was offered two jobs: one with Beverly Hills and another with the Irvine School District. She commuted from Manhattan Beach an hour each way to Irvine for two years. She really hated the commute, so that’s when I decided to buy another practice in Los Alamitos and moved to Irvine. The new practice was a disaster. I hated it. I had absolutely no interest in running the practice. My daughter was in high school and my son moved to UC San Diego. This is the time I felt I had to make a life decision.

I don’t call the Los Alamitos practice a mistake. My interpretation of mistake is when you do something wrong. If I spell a word incorrectly, that’s a mistake. But when you make a decision that turns out to be the wrong decision, it’s not a mistake. Based on what you had going for you at the time, it was the best thing you could do. So I’m not going to call that [my Los Alamitos dental practice] a mistake; I’m going to call it a decision that didn’t work out. Things were going from bad to worse and my whole emotional being was in complete turmoil. The lucky thing is that my wife understood, and though finances became tight, she supported me in my moves.

Now I’m 47. What do I do? My wife was very nervous about my personal agitation. She was my emotional support at this time. I went to a company that specialized in career counseling, that helped me break down my interests into possible saleable skills. They take you apart into small pieces than put you together again into a new puzzle. What kept showing up in these inventories and discussions was the computer field. I thought, “Computers! That’s passed me by. How can I find work in the computer field?” To make a long story short, I learned to become a programmer from a vocational school in Anaheim. I began working part-time as a dentist. My wife was now the main income earner.

The fact that my wife became the principle wage earner didn’t bother me. I think that, as a man, that’s important. I had to let that part of my ego go. Some men would consider this situation too demeaning to them. I think I have a very strong ego outside of the work I do. So those were the two foundation blocks that made this first change possible: my wife’s support and my not caring about her financial support. I began working two days a week working for a friend, a dentist, while I was attending the computer school for a couple years.

Now I really had to have a strong ego because now I was a 49 years old man looking for an entry-level position in computer programming. Interviewing in the corporate world was an entirely new experience. I got a job after four interviews at Rockwell. I had never worked with fellow employees before as a peer. The relationships among dentists were different. I had been my own boss up until then. Many of my new co-workers asked me where I worked before. When I told them I had been a dentist, they (I imagined) became suspicious about why I would ever give up a lucrative career like dentistry. Was there a malpractice problem? I had a great adjustment to make in this corporate community I knew very little about. It was a microcosm of society – you had janitors, executives, rank-and-file workers, everybody. I managed to successfully integrate myself, however, and was successful.

I worked at Rockwell for ten years until I was nearly sixty. Then Rockwell downsized in 1992 and I became a victim of “last hired, first fired”. I felt betrayed at the time. They gave me a ten-year layoff settlement, which helped our finances. I was still bitter for a while because I had worked so hard for them.

My philosophy is one that if sometimes what you perceive as an awful situation arises, it can become a gate to new opportunities that you just never thought of. Having the kidney problem when I was a child was not a good thing, but that illness saved me from a worse situation. I now have lived a long life thanks to that bad situation. Still my

philosophy was tested because 1992 was a horrible time to be looking for work. I unsuccessfully looked for work for a year. Finally, I got a job at a Virgin Mega Store in Costa Mesa where they sell electronic gadgets and music. Lo and behold, I was suddenly able to use my music education. I not only sold music, but also taught about classical music. I called my job “breaking virgins into classical music”! A customer would come in looking for one recording and they’d walk out with ten. I wasn’t proud of having sold them those CD’s but was proud of having educated them enough to want to hear more.

I admire anyone who does what he does well. I don’t care if the person installs microwave ovens, if he does it well, I respect him. I’m not impressed with a president just because of his position. If he doesn’t do his job well, I’m not impressed.

Every step of one’s life is important to the next step. If one skips a step, one might miss some important and good things. That process may be circuitous, but I would have missed meeting my wife if I hadn’t been a dentist. That career wasn’t satisfying, but it gave me a family. So unpleasant things can result in great good.

After 3 years at Virgin Mega Store, I was ready to do nothing. That is a very hard thing to do. I’ve always felt the need to do something constructive because that’s the way I was brought up. At 63 I said to myself, I haven’t been a flake, I’ve earned the right to do nothing. That realization was a big breakthrough. But I still want to do something that I’m not pushed into doing.

About four years ago, we were having a Thanksgiving party. I was complaining about all the things I had written, one thing was a trilogy of novels sitting in a drawer doing nothing. I had no desire to play the game of marketing my books. I was lamenting this to my son-in-law’s father. He had been active in theater, community-type stuff, and he asked, “Why don’t you write a play?” I thought, write a play. I can’t do that. Yet three days later, I thought, why not write a play? Now what could I write about? I decided to write about something I wouldn’t have to research, so I picked a subject roughly autobiographical. Having written the play, I entered it in a playwright’s competition in Dubuque, Iowa and I won the contest. Since then, I’ve written six more and working on an eighth play. I have a lot of plays in my body but I thought just writing plays is not enough – too pretentious. So I took courses through Orange Coast College in theater, production, and acting.

I am just now finishing that part of my life. I’m through taking classes. I’m just beginning my career as a playwright. I am writing to theater

groups throughout the United States listing my plays and their subjects. This has actually generated a lot of interest, though nothing concrete yet. Yet many theater groups have asked for my plays. I’ve acted in four plays and have recently had my first play produced. I trusted the director, so I took no part in producing the play except for helping select the actors. When I saw some of the audience leaving the first showing, dabbing tears from their eyes, I thought, I will be successful for this is the reaction I wanted. Who knows what will happen in my new career? I don’t. I’m new at this. But I know I have a good chance of being successful.

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Joan HansenFlight Attendant to Journalist

Joan Hansen was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1952. She was the 2nd of four children. Her father was a TV repairman and later an electrical technician for Hughes Aircraft. Her mother was a housewife. Money was always a problem but she never felt it and only realized their finances were modest when she and her siblings were grown. Joan says she started to work and pay for any “extras” from the age of fourteen when she worked in a roller rink snack bar. Other than food and clothing, she paid for everything. Both parents shared a strong religious faith as Catholics and conveyed a strong work ethic. When Joan was twelve, she moved with her family to San Diego and then to Santa Ana. When she was seventeen, she began working at the new Sears in South Coast Plaza while attending Santa Ana Community College. In 1972, Joan started work as a flight attendant for United Airlines. In 1985, she returned to school to complete her Bachelors in Communication and Journalism. For thirteen years she worked towards her BA while flying, and was hired by the Irvine World News. Now she flies only on weekends, and writes for the paper during the week.

I was raised in a very secure world and the first time I confronted drugs and long hair was at Santa Ana College. I wasn’t completely comfortable there. I admire people who step out and take control of their lives. They don’t think there are a lot of external demons out there. They move ahead with their lives. They do rather than philosophize.

In 1972 I started flying. I was working at Sears and one of the customers came in one day and told me that United Airlines was hiring. Since they hire in large bunches of people, he suggested I apply right away. This I did with one of my girlfriends. I had accumulated about fifty units at Santa Ana College by this time. I knew I was going to be hired by one of the airlines. I just knew it. So I didn’t study anything in particular. I simply wanted to travel; whatever I was motivated by was unrealistic. Remember that I was a nineteen-year-old. We went through the interviews. It was a cattle call. They asked me back for a second interview. Two years later, I was married. My husband is a physical therapist and we have two children, one twenty and one seventeen.

I’ve been working for United for twenty-nine years and will be eligible to retire when I’m fifty. I’m testing the waters here at the Irvine World News to see if the journalism field is secure. If it’s not, I probably won’t leave the airlines. The first two years of flying, I thought of nothing but my own immediate gratification and travel. I had no responsibilities

and I chose not to become a supervisor. At the end of six years as a flight attendant, I was no longer interested in that so much as starting a family and buying a house. I had other priorities. The reality that this job was just work was painful. I had to work, though, because the bills kept coming in. My professional goal was to simply bring in the money.

My two children really added to my list of responsibilities. My husband said to go ahead and quit. But I couldn’t do that. Nobody made me work. I had been poor and knew what it was like not to have money. I was uncomfortable not working. I was not comfortable as the traditional housewife. It meant relinquishing too much control and I was unwilling to do that.

In the mid-eighties United Airline pilots went on strike and I was hit with a realization. Other than being a flight attendant, I had no saleable skills. This is the only thing I’m trained to do and I was unhappy with this realization. At that point, I determined to return to college. With two kids in tow, I registered for classes at Irvine Valley College. The highlight of my week was going to school – not working and not being a mom. I loved my classes. I went to school, two classes a semester from 1989 to 1998, steady, no breaks. I also volunteered at my children’s schools, took part in fundraisers. The hardest parts of all this was the guilt.

During the past few years the work as a flight attendant was so excruciatingly boring that I could only fly when my girlfriend was flying with me. College saved me; the classes were stimulating. I shouldn’t complain about a job that takes me to Sydney, Hong Kong, or London. But that no longer mattered to me. Even talking to passengers got to be old because I always wanted to be somewhere else.

Working as a journalist suits me. I really like it here. The problem is that here I’m replaceable. My flight attendant work is my security blanket. If I feel secure here, I may retire from flying at fifty. When I decided to study journalism, I simply sat down with the majors and began eliminating them. At this point in my life I knew myself better than I did as an eighteen-year-old. I weeded out those things that would be clearly unsuitable for me – medicine, science, or architecture. I found Communications and within that major eliminated first the areas of Public Relations. I had done that as a flight attendant by creating a world that didn’t exist. I considered Broadcasting, but then decided, come on, Joan, you’re too old to get on the evening news. I thought why not Advertising, but then thought, did I really care how many bottles Coca-Cola was able to sell. This left Journalism. Even though I’d never written that much, I decided to try print journalism. It

offered creativity, general knowledge, writing … maybe I could fit this somewhere in my life.

A guy who seemed to only want to insult us all taught my first journalism class. A former LA Times writer, he thought his job was to discourage rather than teach. But I stuck it out. I’d rather flunk than ever quit something I begin. That’s just the way I am. My next class was much more encouraging. It was a feature writing class taught by a staff member for People Magazine. She loved her work and loved to teach. She showed us examples of our own good writing. I experienced a lot of success but humiliation, too. I had many inadequacies. I was learning a new skill and it’s hard not to be as good as you think you are. I had an instructor who advised the newspaper at the college named Jeff Brody. He was very honest about my writing, which is what I needed at that time. For a while I felt like a huge wart surrounded by all the youthful students.

Mentors were there when I needed help, though I can’t think of any in particular. I brought myself along. When you’re at your lowest, someone will be there. Jeff Brody was very helpful because he let me do what I needed to do. My husband was also very, very supportive during this time in college. I was on the edge all the time. I feel secure right now, at this moment, but every day is a challenge. I feel much more secure here [at the Irvine World News] than any other place I worked. The other writers make me feel safe here. The previous paper I worked at was chaotic and unsupportive. I needed some reinforcement that I wasn’t getting at the South County paper.

My strongest skills are my determination to do what I decide to do. I’m an action person who puts little deep thought in decision-making. I’m not afraid of putting my foot in my mouth; I’m not afraid of people. I can relate on all levels with both the custodial person and well as the publisher. I’m not too hard on people; I let them be with their imperfections. As far as communicating with different people, I like their differences.

My advice: I think people should just do it and I think they should do it before they think they should do it. It’s hard to be at the bottom of the pecking order when you start a new occupation. You have thirty-year-old supervisors and sometimes that’s hard to swallow. You just have to put one foot in front of the other. I’m going to just get up tomorrow and do it again. And eventually you break through to the light and then you feel like you’re a part of something new.

Kathy ReedCatalog Model to Housewife to Flight Attendant

Kathy was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 13, 1943. She describes her childhood as idyllic, having grown up with her parents and brother in the countryside. During her middle years, Kathy found the courage to end an abusive seventeen-year marriage. Although, she had worked as a catalog model for a couple years, Kathy felt she had no skills to draw on. She began working as a flight attendant for American Airlines when nearly fifty-years-old and is currently a seven year veteran with them.

My mother quit high school in tenth grade while my father graduated. We moved to the country when I was in kindergarten. This was Lake Villa, about fifty miles north of Chicago. It was a wonderful way of growing up. We had a lake at each end of our gravel road. We fished, swam, and skated on the lakes. We spent our lives out of doors. My parents would have preferred I had gone to college, but I wanted to be a mom and got married at eighteen. We moved to Oklahoma. My husband was in the Air Force and our marriage lasted four years. He had been the football hero and I was the cheerleader, like in the Nicholas Cage movie.

After the marriage ended, I returned to Chicago and began modeling for the A Plus and the Patricia Stevens Modeling Agencies. I was the girl next door, the college student, or young mother. I was aiming for high-fashion modeling. The work was feast or famine; one month I’d be doing just fine and the next I didn’t know where my next dime was coming from. I met my second husband in Chicago and since he lived in Carona del Mar, I moved out here with him. He was seventeen years older than I.

I loved being a stay-at-home mom and doing mommy things. I loved to sew, and made all of Brook’s [her daughter] dresses. I made her clothes and the special things. I made stuffed bunnies and hosted birthday parties. I was so satisfied staying at home with the two children [a son and a daughter] that I had no desire to look outside for a career. The marriage was terrible. I suppose one of the reasons I stayed in a very abusive marriage for so long was because I was told over and over that I was incapable of doing anything. I also told myself that someone needed to protect the kids. I knew that if I didn’t get out of this marriage, I would die, not at his hand, but because of the stress.

After some family counseling, a therapist referred me to Women’s Opportunity Center at the University of California, Irvine. I attended their groups for almost a year. I learned a lot through that. That where I got a tremendous education, talking to women not in my circle. I’ve recommended this program again and again. I also have to attribute

Orange Coast College [for some of the success of my change]. In December of 1986, I got my husband out of the house. In January, 1987, I signed up for a ballet and art history class at Orange Coast College. I was testing myself to see if I was competent. At that point I was a bird out of a cage. My ex-husband had been so jealous, I couldn’t go to the market without his thinking I was having an affair. I was thrilled and couldn’t get enough of education. I ultimately received an AA degree and I worked with Ros Snow, who ran the Assessment of Prior Learning Program at Coast. Having to write a detailed autobiography of my experiences helped me to see the tremendous array of skills I had collected through life. After having been told I was dumb for so many years, seeing my skills in this light was wonderful. Both these experiences saved me.

After I received my AA degree, I continued doing volunteer work but instead of quietly remaining in the background, I began taking a leadership role. I became chair of a huge fundraiser. Before that there was no way in the world that I felt I had the ability to work with people or to make decisions. The fundraiser I was in charge of was for the Children’s Home Society, a debutante ball at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point. To be successful at that ball I had to pick excellent people. In January of 1992, I started interviewing with the airlines. The ball was to be held in November of 1992. In June of 1992, I was hired by United Airlines and had to go for training. Since I was based in Chicago, I had to coordinate this event from a distance. I didn’t think about doing this. I just did it. That was a big success story for me.

I went to that ball without a date. That was a real issue with the organizing committee. I had no husband to escort me and they were afraid it would be embarrassing for me to walk out on the stage alone. So I picked the young man with the longest hair and the most earrings and the most outrageous appearance to escort me onto the stage.

I didn’t have to apply for work. I got to feeling that my life was too safe. I didn’t feel I was growing, even though I had been successful with the volunteer work. I had the house as part of the divorce settlement, I had nice friends, but socially, I didn’t feel I was moving forward. I thought I’d just give it a try and see what happened.

One of the difficult adjustments to make in accepting the United Flight Attendant job was living with six people in a two-bedroom apartment, sleeping on a futon. It was an adjustment, but it was fun. It was wonderful. I don’t love my job, but I don’t regret what it’s done for me. For example, I had a tough time talking to men after my bad relationship. On an airplane, you have to talk to men. That was a

tremendous breakthrough for me. Dealing with the people is what I enjoy about my work right now. My paycheck is not great but I take pride in it.

I admire people who finally realize what they’re capable of doing, and make changes, and take responsibility for what their life is. People just like me! Ha, ha! People who don’t blame others for their situations. I admire women who are out there doing things. I admire women who don’t just golf and go on vacations – that’s not wrong. I think about these women, though, why don’t you take what you’ve got and use it to better society?

Some advice: Change is good for all of us. We always get something out of changes though, even if they’re painful. People just need to go for it. Nothing you say is wrong or stupid. You must make mistakes so that better things develop from it. You’re not failing. You’re learning. Don’t be afraid of learning about yourself, even if you’re afraid of what you’ll find. I thought that therapy was the best gift I could have given to myself. Learning about myself ultimately became my greatest source of support. Myself.

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Gloria and Larbi LoucifSafety Management/Human Resources to Inn Owners

Gloria and Larbi Loucif own the Pine Knot Guest Ranch located in Big Bear Lake, California.

Before becoming innkeepers, Larbi was the Occupational Safety Director atthe University of Southern California while Gloria was the Director of HumanResources for El Pollo Loco, a fast food company. They are both extremely pleasedwith their present circumstances and plan to double the number of cabins in theresort from eight to sixteen.Gloria was born the youngest of four daughters in September of 1952. She wasraised on a farm near Chanute, Kansas. Gloria’s father studied to be an engineer andher mother was a schoolteacher. "We were the first to have indoor plumbing", shestated. Gloria attended Kansas University where she received a Bachelors inDietetics in 1974 and a Masters in Business Administration in 1981. Larbi was bornin March, 1955 halfway around the world in Algeria, North Africa. He came here as astudent in 1979 and came from a large family all the members of whom completeduniversity and/or graduate work. He describes his upbringing as middle class. Larbicompleted a bachelor’s degree in 1983 and a Masters in 1984 in Occupational Safetyat the University of Southern California. Larbi and Gloria met at a Sierra Clubcross-country ski trip in Big Bear in 1992-93.

**********GloriaMy first career was in dietetics and from there I went into education and training,and from there into human resources. I practiced dietetics only for a year-and-ahalfbut you don’t see much in the way of results in that field. Then I transitionedout of dietetics into training and development in the field of health care. While

living in Kansas City and completing my MBA, I had a chance to move to Colorado towork for a food service company. When that office was closed, I was transferred toCalifornia and transitioned into human resources with Denny’s.

I had been a training dietician with the Kansas University Medical Center. Then Imoved on as director of training. I moved to a for-profit hospital in Kansas City,Research Medical Center. Once I finished my MBA after six years, I felt free to goto Colorado. I was working for Denny’s at the time. I was the regional director oftraining and I really enjoyed that. We had restaurants in eight states – I createdtraining for the general and assistant managers. Towards the end of my time there,I got into more specific training to develop a new menu for Denny’s. I think at thetime there were 1,200 restaurants throughout the country.One of the divisional vice-presidents suggested that I come out to California. I wasgiven responsibility for training AND human resources in 1988. That was a bigchange for me. I moved to El Pollo Loco, owned by Denny’s, and promoted to Directorof Human Resources. I was in that position for four years.

LarbiAll my background has been in Occupational Safety. I began as an engineering majorat San Diego State and then transferred to USC. My friends talked me into comingthere. My professional career began in the U.S. because I was never expected towork while growing up in Algeria. When I graduated from USC, I was hired therefull time. Then I entered the "real world" and for ten years worked for a hazardouswaste company. Then I returned to USC for a couple years as the occupationalsafety director. I speak French and Arabic as well as English.

In 1989 I worked for BKK Corporation, a waste management company. It was a family-owned company and I worked there until 1997. Then I

worked for about a year with a much larger hazardous waste company called OHM Remediation Services; they cleaned up military bases and large toxic waste sites. But I always wanted to go back to USC. I stumbled upon an ad in the newspaper that advertised a position at that school, I interviewed, and was hired. In February 1998, I started again with USC under the Risk Management and Career Services. I didn’t find much satisfaction in Occupational Safety. Safety is telling people what to do all the time. There’s a lot of babysitting. So I wasn’t enjoying it any more. USC, though, was really fun to work at; it has been one of the best places I’ve ever worked.

The ChangeWe started thinking about four years ago that we’d like to retire in ten years. Wewere making good money and went to a financial planner. I was sent by my company toa seminar on Career and Life Planning, which was actually a scholarship program.Only twenty women got to go and it was underwritten by the Women’s Food ServiceForum. During that time, we developed personal goals. Mine was to buy a guest ranch.Then about a year after that El Pollo Loco was sold, my job was going to change,which I didn’t want to do, so I got laid off. I thought this was a chance to make achange. Both Larbi and I took the Personal Development Inventory and I had timeto call people in the hotel/inn keeping business. Four weeks after I was laid off, wemade the decision to buy a guest ranch. I became more serious about making adecision about my life. Larbi was a bit resistant and hesitant to give up his job atUSC. I love nature and the outdoor life, so the traffic and pollution helped me makethe decision.

For four months, I did research, interviewing resort and lodge owners. We had aninternship at Sorensen’s Resort in Lake Tahoe. John and Patty Brissenden had ownedthis resort for fifteen years and gave us wonderful information about how tooperate and run our own place. It was an unstructured internship. He gave us a

manual, spent some time with the housekeeping and front office staff, and heanswered many of our questions about the business. We bought a book, How toBecome an Innkeeper. Also I went to a three-day workshop on the subject in SantaBarbara sponsored by the Professional Association of Innkeepers International(PAII). Long Beach City College had some courses that were directed towards hotelsrather than inns or resorts. We also listened to a tape called Visionary Business.Some of the biggest adjustments over the last six months have been spending somuch time together. We worked separately before. We wanted a cabin resort buthaving this, you’re totally in charge of your time. I’m in charge of accounting anddecorating, and Larbi is in charge of marketing. I joined the Soroptomist Club todevelop relationships here in Big Bear. People have been very positive in thiscommunity and have taken us under their wings. We found the cabin resort on theInternet and had actually stayed here years ago.

We had taken a vacation in Egypt. Just before we left, we made an offer on thisplace. The real estate agent called just when we returned and asked if we wouldmeet him halfway. We did and the seller accepted our second offer. Within amonth after we found the property, we were moving up here. We started with a listof ideal criteria for a business property and this one met all of them. We want toprovide the best service to ourguests. We love to decorate and we intend toincrease the number of cabins. Our goal still is to have enough money to travel, sowe want to arrive at the point that we don’t have to be here all the time. In theeight years we’ve been together, we’ve traveled a lot. We really love it here. Welove to dress casually. We no longer have to commute three hours each day to work.

We love having guests and making them happy, even more so than I thought. It’s veryrewarding to get immediate feed back from the guests. We offer gift baskets,in-room massages, candle light dinners; we call this a "pampering list".

Some advice: Find out your passions and what you want out of life. Develop thestrength to change, write your goals down, and just do it. Talk to lots of peoplewho’ve done it. This is reassuring. Some of the people we talked to weren’t exactlygeniuses and we thought, if they can do this, we can!

Sylvia EdwardsTeacher of the Deaf to Animation Production Manager

Sylvia Edwards, an intelligent, introspective person, was born August 8, 1951.She has been in education and more recently involved in the entertainment industryas an animated film producer. She is currently considering teaching at the collegelevel. Her journey is what inspired me to write about the career adventures ofothers.

***********My parents attended college but didn’t finish. I remember them attending classeswhile growing up in Texas. Mother worked for the Department of Insurance andbefore that the Post Office. My dad did a number of things; he worked for the LongBeach Naval Yard and for the Los Angeles County School Board. He usually workedin clerical or stock positions. Then he did real estate until he retired.

I enjoyed both parents entire childhood. They stayed together, so in that sense Ihad a traditional upbringing. Both my parents were somewhat reserved and quiet.When I was younger we attended church regularly. Then when I was about eightyears old, they encouraged me to attend a variety of churches with friends.

Traditional and encouraging are about the closest words to describe my upbringing.My parents always said, "If there is anything you’re interested in, you can do it." IfI were interested in space, they would help me realize that interest. I remember mydad and I going to watch Sputnik. I went through a stage in which I was veryinterested in astronomy and animals. That was the year they gave me a microscope.I had two sisters and a younger brother. I am single with no children. My closestsister is four years and my oldest sister is eight years older. My brother is sixyears younger than I.

When I made my career shift I was 41. I think age is important in the sense that itcan be used as an excuse not to pursue your dreams. It’s a dual position. You mightnot be hired because you’re older. On the other hand, you might be hired because theemployer wants to hire someone who is more mature. Age shouldn’t be the reason youdon’t go after a change. When I interviewed for the internship at Hanna-Barbera, Ibrought up my age right away. I told the interviewer that I would be willing to besupervised by her even though she was much younger than I.

I own a home and have no other sources of income other than what I generate byworking. I’ve been doing free lance line producing for a show with a smallindependent production company. When I made the change I had saved over thecourse of teaching. Because my first animation work was an entry-level position, mysavings got me through that time.

My early work history was babysitting until I was about 17. My first real job wasat JC Penney’s working as a clerk while going to Compton Community College. Iworked as a clerk for the Department of Disability, Human Resources for two years

while taking a break from attending school as an art major. I also took Frenchclasses, thinking about becoming an interpreter for the UN or something like that. Iliked school very much.

I had been teaching at Taft School for the Hearing-Impaired for about ten yearsbefore the change. I worked with deaf children from pre-school to sixth grade.Although I enjoyed the work very much, I’d always been interested in filmproduction. So I started making a plan about how I could do that. I didn’t want thatto be just a dream. I physically wrote down my goals bringing a focus to my planwhich I hadn’t had before. My goal was to get an internship in the film industry, notto get a position in the film industry. Getting an internship is do-able whereasgetting into the film industry is actually too broad a goal. My goal was to get anentry-level position in a film or TV studio. I knew I could do that. That’s how youfind out what’s going in an industry.

I had a combination of the financial planning going on – I had a specific account forsaving for the change – and at the same time, I was dealing with some physicalproblems. I wasn’t energetic and did not feel well. These things were impacting mydecision. I asked myself, "If you’re feeling this tired, how can you make thischange?" I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. So I decided to go to counseling for awhile. It turned out I had fibroid tumors on my uterus so there was a physicalcomponent to my fatigue. I suffered a severe drop in my hemoglobin, and decided on ahysterectomy. This cleared the way for the change I had planned.I had developed a five-year savings plan. I had the surgery when 39 and made thechange at 40. I’m a calculated risk taker. I have to talk to myself about it. I do alot of planning. Then I just jump into it. You can’t foresee everything

that willhappen. So you must assume that you can handle whatever comes up. My friends andco-workers, not so much my family, questioned the move. I couldn’t answer what Iwould do because I didn’t know what would be there. Making a transition doesn’t giveyou a box to go into. You can go to the Grand Canyon, you can follow a map to getthere, but what happens after that depends on what you see in front of you.My major obstacle to changing was my assumption that I was depressed. I’m stillglad I pursued the counseling for a year even though my fatigue turned out to bephysical. Counseling bolsters your courage. It helped me through the surgery. It washard for me to know I wouldn’t ever have children. My family said things like, "Yeah,I can see you doing that" [when talking about Silver’s career shift]. My dad said, "Iwas wondering when you’d do something like that." My family assumed I would find away.

For two years I commuted one-and-a-half to two hours to Burbank from HuntingtonBeach. That commute could have stopped me from doing it. It wasn’t ideal, but Iwasn’t going to let that stop me. We give ourselves reasons NOT to do somethingand that would have been a perfect out.

I started seriously considering a change seven years before I actually did it. Iremember that as young as age six, I was interested in story telling and televisionproduction. I’d been teaching for a few years. My mother was seriously ill so Ithought about what was happening with my family. Around 1983, I started thinkingthat I could take some classes. I would seriously study it [the animation industry]and then make a decision.

I gained a lot from the change. For example, I developed a greater

comfort level indealing with people. I was incredibly shy as a child. I felt greater confidence. I tookto production management [of animated features]. Keeping track of progress overtime was similar to what I did in teaching. I gained a comfort level in publicspeaking that didn’t exist before. I learned to cold call strangers. I joined a groupcalled Poet’s Reading in Fullerton. They had a forum at a museum library and I wouldvolunteer to help them. I called to get donations, and at first I was petrified to dothis. My internship at Hanna-Barbera involved calling colleges. They had a Hanna-Barbera storyboard contest. They wanted a listing of colleges.There was a cost. My savings were getting depleted. I was working at Hanna-Barbera at the time, but I wasn’t sure I could make it. I went to the producer andsaid I can’t do it financially. I had never asked for a raise before and had difficultyasking for more money. The producer shifted me into a production coordinatorposition, which was quite a bit, more money. I had to take a big cut in pay so gettingthrough the first year was my goal; after that was gravy.

My emotional support during all this was the mentor I found. I physically went totwo people and said, "I want to be mentored". They both said they would. I wasentering a totally different world. One was a producer and the other was in chargeof production and then ran the studio at HBO. I thought I would miss summers offas I had in teaching. I haven’t missed it yet. One of the biggest adjustments hasbeen the political nature of what I do. That’s something I’ve struggled with. Thehigher up you go, the more you have to deal with politics. In the classroom, it’s onlyyou and the students. Now I’m the production manager of whatever show happens tobe going on. Through all this, I’ve drawn on my repertoire of strongest skills: being

flexible, being a good communicator, prioritizing, and writing, being diplomatic, andhaving a sense of humor.

I think that this has been a successful change because I’m actually pursuinginterests I’ve had since childhood. I’m at a stage right now where I’m askingwhether I want to continue doing what I’m doing. I’m not as involved in the creativeside [of animation] as I wanted to be. I enjoy the brainstorming to develop a show. Iwas very much a part of the creative process during the first two years. Now I’mjust putting together a production, but not I’m not in on the artistic development. Iwrote a story for Jack & Jill Magazine and got to write a couple of episodes of TwoStupid Dogs. I found I didn’t like writing for TV as part of a staff. I prefer towrite stories independently and I’m getting back to writing.

I’d do it over again and there’s very little I’d change about it. I did come away withsomething from that. HBO got very political and ugly. Some people displayed a meanspirited side to themselves. Treasure the people who don’t follow that negativeroad. People in the entertainment industry call the meanies "sharks". I wouldn’t haveseen that side unless I’d been part of that environment.

Do as much financial preparation as you can to make the change. Consider detailslike insurance and living arrangements. Be prepared to cut back once you start. Giveyourself a year. Clarify what broad area you want to pursue. You must be specificwithin a field. A person who says I want to FINISH a screenplay in two years ismore realistic than one who says I’m going to SELL a screenplay. Think in terms ofsteps. Leave yourself the freedom to cut your losses if you discover the change isnot for you. Do lots of informational interviews. Think clearly about yourmotivations and about mental obstacles. Being single made changing

easier than if Ihad a family to support and give time to, but that obstacle can be dealt with, as canall obstacles.