By Gregory J. Wilcox
General contractor Mike Quiroga wants to show the Valley’s high school kids that it’s possible to hammer, saw and manage their way to a nice, middle-class life.
The owner of Mike’s Roofing and Building is forming California’s first construction-related Explorer post, creating a program to help high school juniors and seniors learn about the building trades.
“We want to help them,” said Quiroga, president and CEO of the roofing company he founded 39 years ago. “If some kids in high school want to see how the construction industry works we can take them under our wing and let them go from there.”
Quiroga is working with the Van Nuys office of Learning for Life, the Irving, Texas-based nonprofit that started the Explorer program 62 years ago.
Starting with an initial class of 10 students, Explorer Post 780 will meet monthly at the Van Nuys office of Mike’s Roofing. Members will have the chance to meet with guest speakers, learn to use various tools and visit job sites and materials manufacturers.
“They are going to be working the estimators, see how a roof is installed and see how hard the work is,” Quiroga said. “Some people like to work with their hands instead of sitting in an office.”
Explorer programs are designed to help teens learn about various careers, from police and fire service to health and social services.
Quiroga’s post will fall within Learning for Life’s skilled trades group – one of only nine nationally with this designation, spokeswoman Debbie Williams said.
Although the construction sector was hammered during the Great Recession, Nancy Sidhu, chief economist at the Kyser Center for Economic Research in Los Angeles, thinks the new post is a good idea.
“Programs like this are definitely very interesting and the construction industry is one where there is an opportunity for so many different kinds of skills, both blue collar and white collar,” she said.
Brenda Bradford, manager of the Learning for Life office in Van Nuys, said she hopes similar posts can be formed.
“It’s a matter of finding companies like Mike’s, who are willing to take on the kids,” Bradford said. “Mike is just so community-service oriented that it was a good fit for him.”
There are currently 24 Explorer programs in the Valley with about 800 cadets enrolled, she said. Most are first-responder oriented but there are three aviation posts, along with medical, military and media arts posts.
“This is a good reality check in terms of confirming whether this is what they really want to do,” Bradford said. “I have had some fire Explorers who thought they really wanted to fight fires until they actually tried it.”
She thinks there will be a lot of interest in the construction post because the sector offers so many employment opportunities.
“Some kids might decide that architecture is what they want or building inspection. It will expose them to so many different aspects that they can find what they are interested in.”
