After my year off1, I went looking for work. I didn’t want to be a banker. In fact I didn’t want to be anything. I told my friends I had a serious disability, a total lack of ambition. I just wanted a job, something to do, earn a little money, something worthwhile, no big career, no mover and shaker job. I had my day being a mover and shaker and I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t enjoy it while I thought I was doing it. In fact I wasn’t really moving and shaking very much. I was just being used by my employers to look good while they made money in the usual way.
One of the things I had always wanted to do was temp work. I saw temps come through the banks I worked at and some of them were very interesting people. They’d come in, help for awhile, the good ones quickly became part of the office and then they’d move on. I thought it would be interesting to try it, to see the inside of offices I’d never worked in before and then move on. I told a friend I was thinking about it and my first temping job was as a receptionist for the nonprofit where my friend worked.
I enjoyed it. They got a kick out of having a former bank vice president at their front desk and I made a few hundred dollars a week for a month. Then I signed up with a temp agency and did receptionist and filing work. One time a little boutique brokerage went on a ‘training’ junket for a week and left me in charge of the office answering the phone. I was surprised they left a temp by himself but they were satisfied and I had a good time.
The rest of the time was more like work. I was a receptionist at Sutro, the investment house, with limited coffee breaks and I had to ask permission to use the restroom. It didn't hurt my ego to be deflated a little. Then I was a file clerk at Solomon Brothers on the 40th floor of the Bank of America tower, great view. The young up and coming masters of the universe avoided me like a leper. I think they could tell I had come down in the world and they were afraid whatever I had might be catching. I did chat a couple of times with the boss about mountain climbing. I had to work hard for my $10 an hour.
For a short week I was a messenger in the mail room at Morrison and Forrester, a big law firm downtown. I saw lawyers like medieval monks in their cells scribbling away at contracts instead of tomes. It didn't look very exciting. On one of my treks through the floors passing out mail, I stopped to talk with an old friend who was working there. Years before, I hired Richard's firm to do some legal work for the bank I was at. He was good. We became friends. We had both sunk from our former glory days. He was a lawyer at Morrison and Forrester and I was a mail room clerk, but we were OK.
I don’t think knowing an attorney helped my status as a messenger. The mail room supervisor let me go when I sat in the wrong chairs, the ones reserved for supervisors. I moved, of course, but without feeling the proper guilt. I guess I smiled and let it show I thought it was funny. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful but the concern for small privileges was a little overblown. I didn’t take any satisfaction in that. I know small privileges are much harder to obtain than large ones. The mail room supervisor deserved respect. I guess it was hard for me to give him the respect he needed and look like I meant it.
My temp jobs were fun but I needed to make a real living and the temp jobs were hard work, physically demanding, and I didn't earn much.
I needed a real job and it was time to start looking. As a banker I had been the caring face of banks who didn’t care much. I served on community boards, I had done the Lord’s work and the banks took credit for it. For my part I got paid to do the things I enjoyed. Fundraising was the easiest way to get on the inside of a community organization whose good favor we needed. I liked fundraising; I was good at it and I wasn’t looking to make the big bucks. I was a volunteer fundraiser with a talent for it. I thought it would be challenging to become a professional. I could work for someone who really knew their stuff and learn the trade. It seemed like something that would be worthwhile.
Looking for work is not my best skill. In fact, I am miserable at it. I had a few informational meetings that I arranged through friends or my wife at the time, Susan. Nothing came of them. I didn’t impress anyone. I think my lack of ambition showed. I knew I could do a good job fundraising, grunt work, but people seemed to think they needed someone more dynamic. My opinion is a lot of dynamic people try to make long hours and drive look like substance.
I went on an interview with CORO that Susan arranged. I didn’t impress the new director at all. As it turned out the director didn’t impress the board much herself and a year later was gone, but I didn’t get a job with her. I don’t think she wanted to supervise someone her father’s age and she turned out not to have much substance herself, so someone with real experience and substance probably wasn’t the person she wanted to have around.
I finally had a solid lead with the San Francisco Ronald McDonald House. The McDonald Houses are a franchise in most major cities. They are good organizations doing good work, providing housing and a family atmosphere for families of gravely ill children while the children receive care in the local hospital. The San Francisco director was a solid guy. McDonald's Corporation takes credit for Ronald McDonald Houses while they make healthy profits creating generations of obese Americans. McDonald's doesn’t contribute much on the local level, mostly their name, a little organizational help and seed money. Each house does its own fundraising.
I liked the job, I liked the people. By this time, I was also pretty desperate. The decision came down to me and another candidate. We met in a waiting room before the board interviewed each of us separately. I didn’t know the lady who was my competition but I had met her sisters in spirit many times. She was dressed in a hard suit, nylons, high heels. She looked very professional but up close she was wearing a mask of makeup to hide her age and a helmet of lacquered hair.
It was obvious to me she had lived a hard life on the edge, trying to make money in real estate, fundraising or anything else. She probably had a very nice car but lived in an apartment that smelled like a cat. She was a middle aged woman in pain, crusted in bitterness and still holding it together. I knew this job was going to be a reach for her and one more shot at credibility.
I could be totally wrong about her. Maybe the board saw something in her I didn’t. They chose the lady with the lacquered hair.
Now I was even more desperate. I went to a job fair at Fort Mason on my way home from some dead end appointment. There were all these personnel types from small companies looking for dynamic self starters. I was surprised to see Consumer Credit Counselors, CCC a nonprofit I had run into as a banker when they were new back in the early 70s. San Francisco Juvenile Hall was also there looking for applicants. The lady from Juvy wasn’t very enthusiastic but I worked to sell myself and she finally gave me an application to take home. I left an application with CCC.
I went home and filled out the application for the City of San Francisco. I remember there was a filing deadline or some problem I ran into and I pushed my way into talking to a personnel officer and got everything done and put in place. Many years ago when I was finishing up at UCLA one of my daydreams had been to work in prisons. I’m not sure why, my early days in hospitals may have left me permanently institutionalized. I found prisons, jails and juvenile halls fascinating worlds.
I took the test to be a counselor at San Francisco’s Youth Guidance Center. They called it counselor but it was really a guard at Juvenile Hall. I daydreamed of doing work that I really wanted to do. Consumer Credit Counselors was hiring and as an ex-banker I seemed to be attractive to them. The people there were good, the personnel officer and the manager. I told them I had put in an application at Juvenile Hall and that if I got the job, I’d take it, but they hired me anyway. I think they knew better than me the hiring process at the City was more complicated than just putting in an application.
I started to work at CCC as a consumer credit counselor on July 1st, 2001 at $35,000 a year and benefits. I needed that job. It was good work, counseling people who were nearly bankrupt and helping them to dig their way out. The banks weren’t as enthusiastic about the program as they had once been and the people who owned the franchise were eager to make a profit which they took in salary and benefits. We did most of our counseling on the telephone and I hated that, but it was a job. When I was able to help people I got a lot of satisfaction out of it.
I met Suzette Anderson there. She was a young recent college grad and very smart. We became good friends and 11 years later we got married. At that time Suzette was a bit of tease. She was in a relationship and I was married. It took another 6 years for our friendship to blossom into an affair and even as an affair it smoldered more than flamed.
Meanwhile I kept my application going at Juvenile Hall. I took the psych test. My short stay in a psychiatric unit in the Air Force came up. I talked to the psychologist at the testing site and he cleared me to work. I took the physical and they did a background check. When I took the test there were about 50 candidates. Half didn’t pass the background check. It’s surprising how many people with shady pasts apply for law enforcement. I think it’s a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome. Another big chunk didn’t pass the test, basic high school grammar and math. So by the time they hired us, there were only four candidates.
In December, 2001 I was hired as an on call juvenile hall counselor. On call meant we filled shifts for people who were sick or on vacation.
In mid-December we had a week’s orientation class. It was taught by Dennis Cleary2, the Assistant Director. We learned about Juvenile Hall and how it worked, the kids we’d be working with, and some basic self defense and control moves that we would have to use sometimes. It wasn’t much but it was enough to get us started.
I worked my first shift New Year’s Eve, 2001. The first few shifts in Juvenile Hall were with experienced counselors and it was easy, just do what I was told. The population at Juvenile Hall was a little over 100 kids, not just troublemakers, but the very worst troublemakers in San Francisco. A youngster didn’t get locked up in Juvenile Hall unless his or her crime was very serious, or they were a danger to others or everything else had been tried and no place else would take them. We had youngsters accused of murder, assault, mayhem, and gang violence. And then there were the host of kids who were in the system and just couldn’t stay in foster homes, group homes or any other programs and kept coming back to us again and again. They ranged in age from 14 to 18. The 14 year olds were small but had less self control than the older youngsters. Some of the most violent incidents occurred on the unit for 14 year olds.
Most of the time, most of the kids, were mostly good. However, the kids were always on the lookout for a weak spot, a chance to take advantage or even to escape. They needed constant watching and that’s what the counselors did. A counselor was never alone with the kids in the unit unless they were locked in their rooms. There were always two counselors, so if one was attacked, the other could sound the alarm and control the other kids. Ideally there were three counselors, two to handle the kids hands on and one to stand back and control the situation until help arrived.
More often than not it wasn’t kids attacking counselors as kids attacking each other. A counselor would grab one, the other counselor the second kid and the third counselor would call for help. Help was a shout on the radio of “Condition!” then the location and repeating it over and over. “Condition B4! Condition B4! Condition B4!” At that sound, the third counselor in each of the other units would run to the unit with trouble as quickly as he or she could. Usually within two or three minutes, the room filled with an overwhelming number of counselors. Most times it was an overreaction, but sometimes violence would spark violence and the whole room of youngsters would erupt in fights of long smoldering grudges, gang affiliations, and individual problems. Anything could set it off. Every condition had the potential to be a riot.
Many of the counselors were huge; former college football players were common at the Hall and valued members of the team. So once everyone was there it didn’t take long to calm the situations down, but the first couple of minutes could be difficult and if I was wrestling with a kid it could seem like forever until help arrived.
Most of the counselors were incredibly good people. All were college grads and the majority had been there a long time, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. On calls were vetted to see if they could make it. If the supervisors and your fellow workers liked you, you were called to fill shifts until eventually they hired you. If they didn’t like you, they didn't call. The counselors were the kind of people who really cared about the kids. They treated them well, they took care of them, and they liked their work.
However, there were a minority of counselors who for one reason or another shouldn’t have been there. They stayed because of the incompetence of personnel, the lethargy of the system, the union, and civil service. There was one counselor who was very inappropriate with the young men, too close to them, bribing them with treats and gifts. It just didn’t feel right. He had been fired for this behavior, but he got a lawyer and fought it. After a year he won his suit, was reinstated and given a year’s back pay. He was there for good and it did no good to complain about him.
There were other counselors who just played the system, one who was a pothead and liked to stir up trouble just because he could. I’m not sure why they didn’t drug test us. There were counselors who were too old or infirm to do the job, but just hung on, and counselors, who had twisted personalities, couldn’t handle kids, or were troublemakers. They worked there because the pay was good and they could sit behind a desk and let everyone else do the work. There was even a counselor who was a drug dealer and recruited kids in Juvenile Hall for his business. He had very good political connections but he was eventually fired.
My first week or two I worked with counselors who knew what they were doing. The work was easy. They were good people. As an on-call counselor most of my shifts were swing shifts. The regulars with seniority had day shifts. Midnight shifts were an odd collection of burnouts and night people. After the first few weeks I got thrown in wherever they needed me and without any seniority or clout more often than not it was with the counselors who were hard to work with.
I continued to work at Consumer Credit Counselors. I wasn’t sure I was suited to Juvenile Hall or whether they would take me if I wanted a job there. My days off and holidays I worked at the Hall. There was always a need for someone and I began working 40 hour weeks. The pay was good and in March I quit CCC.
The work at Juvy was great. I loved the job. For me it was unexpected but I even liked working with teenagers.
When I went to work at Juvenile Hall they were still in the old building; new construction was being started behind it. To get to the Hall I went through the Juvenile Courts Building on Woodside Avenue and down the hallway on the right, up a half flight of wide stairs and in through double doors that had to be buzzed open. It was its own world. Inside there was a gatekeeper who checked your purpose in being there.
After the small narrow room there was a long wide corridor, plexiglass windows on one side and cinderblock walls on the other punctuated every 25 yards by double doors that were securely locked. Behind the double doors were the units. There were 7 units in Juvenile Hall, B1, B2, B3, up to B5 and then a girls unit. B1 was 14 year olds, younger smaller kids. B4 was 17 year olds, big kids and B5 was the maximum security unit, a unit for the very dangerous youngsters. There was also a unit for non-dangerous arrivals.
B1 was the easiest unit. The kids there were still very much kids and easily manipulated into good behavior. They had to be watched closely because left on their own they had no sense of consequences and were capable of real violence on each other. But for the most part they were small and easy to handle. B4 was the 17 year olds and the kids there were generally calmer, easier to reason with. It was the kids in between B2 and B3 that were the hardest.
As a newcomer it was the kids in between that I usually worked with. There were some good counselors, but that’s also where the counselors who were a problem worked as well. Ms. Brown, the lead for B3 was an obnoxious evangelical Christian, grossly obese who played favorites with the kids, sat behind the desk and never moved. When there was trouble she could always be counted on to make it worse, screaming like one of the kids making accusations and throwing out insults. I could never figure out why she worked there, she seemed to hate the job and the kids.
My day usually started at 3 p.m. I’d go in, check the worksheet to see where I was assigned and who I was working with, the right counselors could make for an easy evening, the wrong counselors could make for a night of hell. Usually it was in between. If there were two of us who knew what we were doing we could compensate for the third counselor. The supervisors tried to balance it out so no one had it bad all the time, but sometimes it just worked out that way.
The unit was laid out in a line up from the doors, a 20 yard hallway. At the beginning of the hallway was a door that opened on to a classroom, which looked pretty much like any classroom in a regular high school, a little more spare on decorations and a little more tattered.
At the end of an upsloping 20 yards, the unit opened into a large room on either side. On the right side was a dining room with a kitchen at the back and a serving slot between the kitchen and the dining room from where the food was served.
At 5 o’clock the main kitchen delivered trays and pans of hot food. It was institutional food, noodles, heavy gravies, nondescript meats, unimaginative vegetables, salad, and cobbler type desserts. There was milk and juice.
On the right side of the corridor was a rec room. The tables in the dining room were fast food restaurant tables with the seats attached that two people could lift and move to the TV side. There were very few things in a Juvy unit that could be picked up and used as a weapon. Things like buckets, brooms, and mops were kept in locked closets.
After the rec room and kitchen the unit narrowed down and on one side was a bench for the kids to sit and on the other a waist high cage and behind it a desk with a chair and a telephone. This was the counselors’ desk. Notes, papers, and the daily log were kept there and anything the counselors wanted out of reach from the youngsters. Behind it was a closet that could be locked where the sporks , a combination fork and spoon, and kitchen utensils were kept and a small bathroom that the counselors could use.
Before three o’clock the kids were locked in their rooms for shift change. We’d check in at the desk, exchange information with the day shift, check the radios and the plastic sporks. The sporks could conceivably be used as weapons; these and the metal ladles and serving spoons were counted at the beginning of shift, after meals, and at the end of shift.
Further on the unit opened up to a large bathroom for the kids and hallways on either side and one straight back. The rooms were on either side of the hallways. In the straight hallway on one side was a shower room. At the end of the right hallway there was a large closet with linens, towels, clothes and cleaning equipment.
The rooms were reasonably large, with two iron bed frames bolted into the floor. We put foam mattresses on the frames. If the hall was crowded we sometimes put an extra youngster in the room and sometimes even two. The youngsters liked this, the more kids the more it was like a party, so the kids who got put together were the kids following the rules, easy to work with, the kids who got along.
All the cleanup, floors swept and mopped, toilets cleaned, food served and everything else we needed, the kids did. Any reason they had to get out of their rooms was appreciated and cleanup was considered a privilege. The kids who knew their way around Juvy watched their behavior to earn the privilege. It was one of the many tools at our disposal to guide the behavior of the youngsters.
At 5:30 we served the kids dinner. Depending on the counselor and the kids, one counselor would work the kitchen and the kids would help. Some of the better kids, usually kids who had been there a long time and knew their way around were very helpful and it paid off for them in time out of their rooms and other privileges we had to dispense. And it was just easier to live there when we all got along, easier for us, easier for the kids.
At first there was a lot of skepticism about my being in Juvenile Hall. I was a grandfather, though most of the counselors there were close to my age. I’m not big, 5’9” and I’m not a fighter. I’d rather talk, but after a while most people came to accept me. The macho types who believed in being rough with the kids never did, but I got along. I proved in a fight I could wrestle with the kids. I learned it was a matter of just jumping in, like being a lineman on a football team. When the quarterback called the number you jumped and hit hard. If you knocked the kids off balance that was usually enough to end the situation.
Some people were never going to accept me and that was fine. The first real fight I saw I did stand flat footed for a few moments. A large kid seriously attacked a smart mouthed youngster and bloodied his face. I also learned a lesson in report writing. The older experienced counselor worked with the other counselor to write a report that made me look like the problem, diverting attention from the other counselor’s mistakes. Most people are stunned by violence, it’s unexpected and they don’t know what to do. But after a while and with a little experience, I learned to respond to it. I used my voice a lot more than muscle, but I learned to jump in when I needed to.
I liked working in Juvenile Hall. I liked the kids. I talked to them, I teased them, I listened to their problems. I treated them well. Most of the time that worked very well with our population. There were very few of the kids who seemed thoroughly evil or mean. Most of them had a good side and most of the time that’s what I worked on. I did learn never to trust the kids. They were all schemers and like bank customers when I was a banker, friendship was fine but when it came down to it, they were going to do what they thought was best for themselves not caring who was in their way.
There was one youngster, McKissick, I don’t know what he was in for. Most of the time we didn’t know. He was well over 6 foot tall, but very slender and gangly, not coordinated at all. He was 15 years old, but his voice hadn’t changed and he had a real little kid kind of feel to him. He had been put with other 15 year olds but he had been victimized by the more mature sophisticated kids and so he was put down in B1 with the younger kids. He fit in and did just fine. He was there for awhile and so he became one of the trusted kids. He was cooperative and helpful and was a regular for cleanup and other privileges.
At one time he sprained his ankle and he had a crutch from the clinic. Crutches were treated with great care in Juvenile Hall and when he wasn’t using his crutch it got locked in a closet. The fear was he or one of the other kids could use it as a weapon before anyone could get close to them.
The kids were locked in their rooms after meals, during cleanup, and during shift changes. After the evening recreation they were locked up until the next morning. A constant thing between the kids and the counselors was their need to use the bathroom. It went on all day and all night. Any time they were locked up it seemed the kids needed to use the bathroom. The more I let them out the more they needed out. I learned to pace their bathroom breaks, make sure everyone got one and then to ignore their whining. If you absolutely must use the bathroom, piss on your shirt and we’ll give you a new one after shift change. They very seldom needed to do that. It took balance. I let the kids out regularly to use the bathroom, when they really needed it and sometimes just because they wanted out, but it had to be controlled.
And whenever the kids were locked up and a counselor was alone in the unit, it seemed like they all needed out. If I was in there for a long time or there was a genuine need, I would call to another unit or a supervisor and someone would come and join me while we let the youngsters out and did bathroom breaks for the whole unit. The rule was never to be in the unit alone with a detainee out.
It was particularly difficult on the midnight shift because all the units but a couple had single counselors and getting a backup counselor could take some time.
One night as usual Mr. Peters was working the midnight shift in B1. He had been at the hall forever and the midnight shift was his regular time. Peters was about 5’3” and 120 pounds. He was an older man, frail and small. He had a good sense of humor, was a very nice guy, but he was one of the midnight people. It was known that some of the counselors sometimes let the kids out by themselves. They knew the good kids; some counselors were big enough to handle anybody and didn’t worry about being attacked. It wasn’t the norm but it happened.
That night Peters let McKissick, the good kid out. McKissick nearly beat him to death with the crutch. He left Peters in a bloody heap behind his desk, took his keys, and escaped the unit. Sometime later someone checking the units found Peters. Paramedics were called and his life was saved. The police found McKissick on the roof of the building trying to find a way to get over the tall fences that surrounded the facility.
Peters survived but he never came back to work. McKissick was charged with attempted murder and was going to stay in custody until he was at least 25 years old or maybe longer. I think kids locked up often dreamed about mayhem but we never gave them the chance. Peters gave McKissick the chance. His story was added to the cautionary tales that got told to remind us all to follow procedures.
I watched counselors relax their guard because they knew the kids, because there hadn’t been any trouble for a long time or just because they were tired. I always reminded myself, that Juvenile Hall was easy, and it was comfortable, but it was always dangerous.
Occasionally filling in at B5, the maximum security unit was usually easier because the counselors knew their kids were dangerous and they were always vigilant. They followed procedures carefully and almost never bent the rules.
Most of the time I enjoyed going to work. I enjoyed my shifts, I enjoyed the people I worked with and I really enjoyed the kids. I got invested in them. I found them funny and warm and I liked that they responded to being treated decently. Besides the counselors, there were teachers during the day, some of whom were incredible. There were nurses who visited the units with meds, mostly Motrin, and antibiotics. There were a few kids on psychotropics but not many. There were psych counselors, probation officers and lawyers. In the evening there were whole host of volunteers, yoga instructors, mentors, community workers, rehab programs, music teachers, and art teachers. There were also families. It was a community, a community I enjoyed.
Sometimes my stomach would twist in anxiety at going to work that I might be stuck with one of the counselors who made working there more dangerous than it had to be. Ferrar was just such a counselor. He spouted some sort of South American liberation ideology, read books at work and provoked the kids just out of sheer boredom and cussedness. He’d get into it with a kid and jack the kid up until there was an incident and the kid was locked up in his room for days as punishment for having lost control. The whole unit would be locked down and Ferrar could read his book. Ferrar enjoyed power and he was unpredictable.
Another counselor, Michaels, was just stupid and always trying to get out of work and lording it over anybody who he thought had less seniority than he did. The kids took advantage of him and then reacted badly to his neglect. He’d argue with them and working with him was always a problem.
There was one counselor who was too old and decrepit to be of any use on the unit. Another counselor was just a twisted personality and had some sort of weird sexual thing going and went sideways with the kids unpredictably. There was another counselor who was into the plight of the Black Man and would provoke the black kids against the white counselors stirring them up with his own sense of victimization. Most of the counselors were very good and decent people but the few who weren’t could be a real problem.
One Christmas at Juvenile Hall I was scheduled to work the swing shift on Christmas Day. I didn’t have much seniority. It was my Monday as we call our first day back after two days off. I agreed with Susan to go down to LA for Christmas with her family, but I had to make it back to work at 3 p.m. on Christmas Day.
I did the Christmas thing with family and then I left early and rushed to the airport, making a plane for San Francisco. I got to San Francisco with little time to spare and rushed to Juvenile Hall. I made it there just before three. I thought it was important to be there for the kids. Holidays were hard for them and I knew they needed someone who cared.
Weekends and holidays the sheriffs who manned the front door of the Juvenile Court Building were off and one of the counselors would be assigned door duty. I looked at the duty roster and that’s what I got. I had been burning with the satisfaction of my own altruism in rushing to be with “the kids” on Christmas Day and I spent the shift watching a door that was little used. Juvenile Hall was like that.
I worked on call for six months. The usual thing was that an on call counselor just worked right through the limited hours that defined on call and by default became a provisional counselor working full time with benefits. Personnel and procedures at Juvenile Hall were so bad, that this haphazard way of promotion had become the norm.
I was used to doing things right, needed to have some definition and as I neared my 1096 hours of work in one year, I said something about it to a supervisor. The next day I was told to stop working and go home until I was called back or until the next 12 month period started. There were four of us in the same situation and the other three were laid off as well.
I was told, don’t worry about it, they wanted to have me full time and the layoff would be temporary. Of course being hired required budget, approval for hiring, and a lot of bureaucracy. It felt like an astrological lining up of the planets to the right configuration. Even if it happened it might be beyond the ability of personnel to take advantage. The personnel office for Juvy was behind a locked door in the court house part of the building. You had to ring a buzzer to get someone to come to the door. That's where business was normally conducted, at the door and no further. Often no one was there or they just didn’t answer the buzzer. If I called on the phone I got an answering machine.
I went home and started collecting unemployment. I remembered when my mother collected unemployment during the 50s she knew she would be called back to work but she had to demonstrate she was looking for work to get her checks. Apparently that wasn’t the case by the time I was collecting unemployment but I felt like I should look for work anyhow.
One morning while surfing the internet I thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up. The answer was easy, a Park Ranger. It turned out State Parks was taking applications online.
Susan, my wife, at the time, had worked for Willy Brown when he was the Speaker of the Assembly and she had kept up her contact with Willy and the people who worked for him. She kept hounding me to let her call Willie’s office. Willy was the mayor of San Francisco. Finally after four months of waiting to hear from Juvenile Hall, I decided I would let her give it a try. I called my friend, Dennis, the assistant director and warned him that Susan was going to call the Mayor. I just wanted him to know where it was coming from.
One thing a bureaucracy hates is scrutiny from an elected official, particularly the Mayor. This fear can even overcome inertia. Two days after my call the four of us were called back to be hired as Juvenile Hall Counselors.
I went back to work, got a regular shift on B4 and enjoyed working at Juvenile Hall for another two years. I didn’t stop my Ranger application. I took the test with State Parks. Juvenile Hall sent me and another counselor to Juvenile Corrections Officer Training through POST, Police Officer Standards Training, at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose.
The training was great, six weeks all together. We were in a class with Juvenile Hall Officers from Santa Clara and Monterey County. It was a good course and at the end of it we were Peace Officers, unsworn and unarmed, but peace officers nonetheless. Along with our class there was a class of Santa Clara Adult Prison Officer Cadets and a class of police cadets for San Jose and other Santa Clara municipalities. One of the cadets was a retired math teacher. John was 57 years old, a year older than I was, and he was doing well in the class and enjoying it. Later when I was called to be a Ranger, John was one of my inspirations to go ahead and try it.
I went back to work at Juvenile Hall as a Peace Officer and I enjoyed it. But two years later when State Parks asked me if I wanted to go to the Academy, I said yes. It was dangerous to work at Juvenile Hall, not because of the population itself, but because of the administration of it, because of incompetent counselors and because safety and procedures were secondary to bureaucratic inertia.
I liked working outdoors. I liked the idea of being a cop. I liked being a Ranger. But I missed Juvenile Hall. There’s something comfortable about pastel walls. And I missed the kids.
1. In 1999 I quit California Commerce Bank and took a year off
