05/20/05

LC050520

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's a win-win situation, landlords who are turning a profit in poor neighborhoods and just may be turning some lives around.

Karen Batiste>> At first I was skeptical and I was curious, but I saw for myself that he was serious and that he was doing what he said he was going to do.

Val>> And then, do wide open spaces make problems seem smaller? We'll take you to a place where city dwellers can relax and recharge.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Question: Can landlords in poor neighborhoods make a profit without being slumlords? Well, in fact, they can not only turn a profit, they can help turn lives around. How? By combining a little social innovation along with apartment renovation. Toni Guinyard met two real estate investors whose successful model could inspire other landlords.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> Just follow the voices of children inside this Baldwin Village apartment complex and chances are you'll end up here, a Resource and Study Room in an unexpected place, inside a one-bedroom apartment. It's open four days a week to youngsters who call the complex home.

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Toni Guinyard>> The Resource Room is believed to be one of a kind. What makes it different is its location, the children it serves and the deal being offered to attract teachers to work and live here.

Joe Killinger>> We take a percentage of the units off the market. We put school teachers in them and then we discount their rents. And for the discount rents, we ask them to tutor the kids that live in the building.

Toni Guinyard>> Joe Killinger is CEO of Learning Links Centers, the real estate investment and management company that bought the building and operates the Resource Room. It was his idea to take apartment units off the market, in this complex, units that rent for $850 a month. One unit now houses a teacher. The other provides children a place to study and be tutored.

Joe Killinger>> You have to have a social conscience and be willing to, instead of having this extra $850 a month, be willing to be giving that back to the community for this room for the kids to be here.

George Pino>> I think that a lot of people see investors or capitalists as not giving back to the community or not having any heart and I don't see that there's anything wrong, that you shouldn't be able to do so. You know, I think that it's a win-win situation for everybody.

Toni Guinyard>> George Pino and Joe Killinger are the men behind Learning Links Centers. In May 2003, they purchased this apartment complex in Baldwin Village.

George Pino>> Some might call us a strict landlord. I'd like to prefer thinking that we put responsibility on the tenants. This is a team effort. It's not just us owning the building and you're living here and we're taking money from you. This is a team effort where we want to build something.

Toni Guinyard>> On one hand, you're saying we're socially responsible. On the other hand, you're saying we're in this to make money. So which is it?

Joe Killinger>> We came in it to be socially responsible, but what we didn't really anticipate is how it lowered the maintenance costs, how the vacancy rates dropped.

Toni Guinyard>> It appears people are talking about the transformation taking place here and the overall quality of life is changing.

Joe Killinger>> We don't have the gangs hanging out on the corners anymore. Our apartment manager that used to be here said, Joe, just know that you are going to get held up at some point. It was my first week of living in this building. It was really a nice initiation. He said you will get held up here at some point.

Toni Guinyard>> Meaning robbed?

Joe Killinger>> Yeah, yeah.

Toni Guinyard>> A lot has changed since then. What do you attribute all of this to?

Joe Killinger>> Pride. These people are taking a lot of pride in the building that they're in.

Toni Guinyard>> But in the beginning, Killinger's idea, buy an apartment complex in a low to moderate income neighborhood and put it to work for investors and tenants, was a hard sell.

Karen Batiste>> At first I was skeptical and I was curious, but I saw for myself that he was serious and that he was doing what he said he was going to do.

April Maddox>> I was very surprised.

Toni Guinyard>> Why?

April Maddox>> I was very astonished because you don't meet people that want to educate your children within the building.

George Pino>> Everyone kept telling us we weren't doing this. No, they're not doing this. We still have tenants to this day. I think there's a couple of the older tenants that still think it's a mirage (laughter).

Sharon Jordan>> This date is right here since he's been going here. I put him in another school. He's getting A's now. The other day, as a matter of fact, he said he got three A's, two C's and two B's. It wasn't me.

Joe Killinger>> When we first opened, I had eight year olds that would sit here at the table and I would try and read with them. I thought I don't understand why this child isn't reading. Well, it turns out she couldn't read and we had some specialists come in. She just couldn't read at eight years old. Now according to her report card, she's passing.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> Amani Afi is a substitute teacher by day, a Learning Links tutor after school. You'll find her here most weekday afternoons bouncing from student to student, determined to give each one some one-on-one instruction.

[Film Clip]

Amani Afi>> I think it makes them enjoy education more, to know that it can be more fun in a more relaxed environment, and I think maybe they appreciate having somewhere to go after school.

Toni Guinyard>> So this ends up being a story not only about a successful real estate business venture, but also about making a promise to a community. A lot of people originally had doubts about what Joe and George set out to do. Few have doubts any more.

Derrick Jackson>> Those guys are true saviors because they come in and, when they came in with the kids and everything, they're truly doing good with the kids.

Sharon Jordan>> I'm going to tell it like it is. I'm really real. Because if I didn't like it, I wouldn't even came and knocked on the door.

Toni Guinyard>> You've been accepted.

Joe Killinger>> Well, we had to prove ourselves at first. We came out here and we told the people what we were going to do and we couldn't do the Resource Room right away. We kept telling everybody no and that unit is going to be a Resource Room. I can't tell you how many I got of these looks.

Toni Guinyard>> I'm sure you got more than that (laughter).

Joe Killinger>> Yeah, we'll see (laughter). But when it went in and then people started seeing we're actually doing it and the teachers started showing up, even then it was a little slow. But now, they're here.

Toni Guinyard>> To understand how this project became a personal mission, Pino says you need to understand more about Joe. He's from a small town in Nebraska, population 280.

George Pino>> He has a little bit more in common with the neighborhood and the children here than what some people realize.

[Film Clip]

George Pino>> He had, I think, under two hundred dollars in his pocket when he got here, slept the first couple of nights in his car. He made himself. You know, it's not like anything was given to him. So he sees the opportunities that he can have and the kids can have. The kids in this neighborhood also had the same feeling. You know, they had the feeling that I can't do this. You know, you have all the breaks. You know, you were given this. And that's not true.

Joe Killinger>> I didn't graduate college. It made it difficult. We're just hoping to create something that will make it a little easier for these guys.

Toni Guinyard>> Killinger dropped out of college because he ran out of money, a situation he wants these children to avoid. So he and Pino founded the nonprofit Education Advantage Foundation to work in conjunction with Learning Links. The goal? Expanding the free after-school tutoring program now and providing college scholarships later.

George Pino>> The children are going to either run the city or ruin it, so we have to do something at this time to hopefully help them run it.

Toni Guinyard>> Learning Links has already purchased five apartment complexes and they're looking to expand. Joe and George are eyeing this Glassell Park neighborhood and communities in Nevada, Arizona and Texas. It's an odd mix redefining the meaning of landlord-tenant relationships. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> Her disguises would make a double agent envious and her makeovers would impress a Hollywood makeup artist, but she's not an actress and she's not a CIA operative. She's just a restaurant reviewer in search of the truth. Vicki Curry talked to Ruth Reichl, the editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine, about her double life.

Vicki Curry>> Ruth Reichl, you have written a book, "Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise". I had never realized that a food critic might need to go in disguise, but it sounds like when you left from ten years at the Los Angeles Times to go to New York, that that became necessary. Why is that?

Ruth Reichl>> Well, I truly believe that it's important for a restaurant critic to be anonymous because what you're trying to do is tell your readers what's going to happen to them, not what happens to a restaurant critic. I felt that, when I was here in Los Angeles, the restaurants weren't that focused on it. When I went to New York, what I discovered was that every restaurant in New York City had a huge photograph of me with an offer of hundreds of dollars -- one case at least that I know of, a thousand dollars -- to any waiter or waitress who spotted me. I thought, okay, if they know who I am, they know what I look like, I'd better look like someone else.

Vicki Curry>> So then, how did you go about coming up with a disguise?

Ruth Reichl>> Well, I thought, okay, what do you need if you're going to be disguised? Okay, you need makeup. I knew nothing about makeup. So my mother's best friend had been a pretty well-known acting coach and she was quite old at that time and retired, but I called her and said, Claudia, can you help me find somebody who can point me to makeup people? Claudia, who at this point really didn't have a whole lot to do with her life, said I'll be right over (laughter). She then said, look, if you're going to do this, do it right.

In addition to finding me makeup people and wig people, she also really made me get back-stories for these characters that I became and she advised me on clothes and we did the clothes. I mean, the pocketbooks, the jewelry. We really thought about who these people were. I had not anticipated that this was going to turn into an acting job. So then we get one great disguise and then I wrote this review that was written partly in the voice of this woman, Molly Hollis. Molly wrote half of a review and I wrote half of a review so you could see how different the experience was for Molly and for me. Then Claudia called me and said, well, you know everybody is going to know what Molly looks like now, so now you have to be someone else.

Vicki Curry>> Oh, my goodness, so do it all over again.

Ruth Reichl>> Do it all over again. So in the six years that I was at the New York Times, every few months I turned into someone else.

Vicki Curry>> So Claudia insisted that you have a back-story, but she came from an acting background, so I can kind of see that. But did you find that that was really necessary for you?

Ruth Reichl>> Well, I did find that there were many times -- and I actually write about it in the book -- when I did half-hearted disguises and everybody could see through them. I mean, you either do it completely or you look pretty transparent. The thing that I hadn't counted on, though, was that these disguises would literally take over, that I would turn into these people. Because you get so much treated the way that you look, when I became a frumpy old lady, suddenly I was being treated like a frumpy old lady. I have to say that, when I became a blonde, I discovered that the world behaved very differently to blondes. I was Chloe, the blonde. Always just seat her right up front so that everybody can see her when they walk in the door.

Vicki Curry>> So who are some of the other characters that you created?

Ruth Reichl>> Well, my favorite character is Brenda. Brenda had very long, wild red hair. She was sort of an aging hippie. The idea behind Brenda was that she was so flamboyant that you could never imagine that she was trying to hide. I loved being her. The world smiled at Brenda. Then there was my mother. I actually turned into my mother, which was terrifying, truly terrifying (laughter). My mother was a very difficult woman. The thing about being my mother was that I took a photograph and sent it to my brother. My brother said where did you get this picture? I've never seen this picture of Mom. I looked so much like my mother that it truly terrified me and I heard her words coming out of my mouth, which was even more scary (laughter).

Vicki Curry>> (Laughter) All of our worst nightmares realized.

Ruth Reichl>> Yes, exactly.

Vicki Curry>> Which of the characters did you feel was most like you?

Ruth Reichl>> Hmm, now there's a hard question. Well, you know, that's a hard thing. I mean, they're all me and that's the problem. You know, it's like coming to terms with the fact that Brenda was my best self, this person for whom the world was a very happy place. Emily was my worst self, this person for whom nothing good ever happened. You know, realizing that really they were all pieces of me and that you sort of have to accept that, you know, there are parts of yourself that are wonderful, but they're not always available to you.

I mean, you wish you could always be generous and kind and you aren't always generous and kind. And you wish you were never horrid and sometimes you are horrid. So, I mean, they were all me. You know, part of what this book is about -- I mean, a lot of it is about restaurant criticism and being at the New York Times -- but part of it is also about self-discovery and how I did find myself through becoming all these different women.

Vicki Curry>> So you spent only six years as the food critic for the New York Times, but yet you had quite an impact on the restaurant business there because the restaurateurs never knew when to expect you.

Ruth Reichl>> Well, I think I became sort of the peoples' voice while I was there. I mean, somebody wrote me a letter and said, you know, that I was this spy in the house of food. What it meant was that restaurateurs would never know who the person they were being nasty to was, so they'd better be nice to everyone. I mean, I think the other thing was that I went there with this California sensibility, with a real love and appreciation of Asian cuisines of all kinds, of the simplicity that used to be called California cuisines.

So I came with a very different palate than the former New York Times critics had had. Nobody had ever seriously reviewed Japanese restaurants, Chinese restaurants and they'd all been relegated to the cheap eats column. You know, one of my biggest impacts, I think, was just coming from Los Angeles and bringing this idea that Asian food is fabulous and needs to be considered for itself and you need to really learn about what the rules of those cuisines are and that everything need not come out of Europe. That was a very radical idea for New York at that time.

Vicki Curry>> Ruth Reichl, author of the book "Garlic and Sapphires", thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

Ruth Reichl>> It's been my pleasure. Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Val>> Are you looking for ways to tell high gas prices to take a hike? Well, we've got an idea for you. Set foot on the Pacific Crest Trail, a stunning 2,600 hundred mile trail from Mexico to Canada. One of the most scenic stretches is here at Vasquez Rocks natural area just northeast of Santa Clarita off Highway 14. That's where I met Tim Stone. Tim is with the United States Forest Service and his job is to maintain the entire trail.

Tim Stone>> In the United States, it's the longest completed trail, I think, for its wilderness character and, you know, along the crest of these great mountains, I think it's the most superlative.

Val>> Only the hardiest of hikers traverse the entire 2,650 miles. They have to time it right and keep the pace up or else they'll hit snow in the Sierras.

Tim Stone>> But those are through-hikers. They do it in one season. Quite a few others are section-hikers, so they've completed it over a lifetime in some cases. I just met a man last summer in northern California on his last day, but he had been doing it every summer for about twenty years.

Val>> What kinds of terrain, what kinds of ecosystem do they go through?

Tim Stone>> Well, about now, two hundred people start every year down on the Mexican border. It takes about six months to get to Canada.

Val>> Six months it takes to do the crest?

Tim Stone>> Six months. They need to get up there before the snow falls. So you're actually starting in a fairly desert ecosystem. As you get up here, you start to get into some higher mountains and then into the Mojave Desert just north of here. But after that, then you start to head up into the High Sierra and that's where you reach the highest point. It's about thirteen thousand feet.

Val>> For the most part, this zigzagging trail is a wilderness experience, but Angelenos are lucky. This particular leg at Agua Dulce is very accessible.

Tim Stone>> It's by far and away closest to a Los Angeles urban community than any other place. Usually it might be forty miles or fifty miles from a major urban area, but it's in your back yard in Los Angeles.

Val>> The Pacific Crest Trail was founded in the 1930's by a wealthy Pasadena philanthropist and outdoorsman, Clinton Clark. But it wasn't until 1968 that an official act of Congress established the trail.

Tim Stone>> People that put this trail in probably in the 1980's couldn't have believed in their lifetime that this area would have gotten built up. We can look around us now and there are houses closing in, so we try not to say it's just a foot path, you know, that what you see when you're on the trail to be able to preserve and protect that.

Val>> Another challenge? Filling in the last remaining gaps. It means acquiring privately owned land. Right now there's a section just north of us where you actually have to walk along a road or a highway?

Tim Stone>> Yeah, you come out on a main road through Agua Dulce and, amongst other things, it's very unsafe. Every year that goes by that we don't acquire these lands, the prices have risen exponentially.

Val>> If this landscape looks familiar, it might be because it's a popular backdrop for films, commercials and television, like the recent movie version of "The Flintstones".

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Val>> Tim prefers the trail for its solitude. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and, although he's walked a good part of the trail, he hasn't hiked the entire 2,650 miles.

Tim Stone>> Probably when I started because of my background and coming from the Pacific Northwest and working in the wilderness areas of Alaska, I probably didn't have as positive of feelings about Southern California, which is hard to believe. But since I've been involved with this trail, I've just realized what a fantastic resource it is and what a great opportunity for people in Southern California to have this in their back yard.

Val>> The United States Forest Service has published the first of ten maps that will give backpackers detailed information.

Tim Stone>> This was number one starting on the Mexican border and we're very proud of these maps. They really focus details about the PTC, day trips, natural history and, if you get caught in a storm, they can also act as an emergency shelter (laughter). I'm kidding. This is waterproof paper.

Val>> Maintaining a route this long depends on volunteers and support groups like the Pacific Crest Trail Association. Then there are people who live alongside the trail called Trail Angels. What do Trail Angels do?

Tim Stone>> Well, it seems like when you're at your lowest ebb and you're out of food and you're out of water, these people will appear and give you a ride into town or let you take a shower at their house. There are some people in town, in Agua Dulce here, the Soffleys, who welcome all of the through-hikers into their house. They have a nice trailer there. So they're known as sort of the best Trail Angels anywhere. I mean, it's just wonderful. That just happened when they met a through-hiker one day in town and now they take their vacation every year when the through-hikers come through. If you ask them, they would say they're the ones that are rewarded, not the other way around.

When it's really hot down in the lower elevations, boy, you can get up in the higher elevations and it's great. There's a lot of different wild flowers out. It's also a good year for wildlife and actually have some water sources as you hike along the trail.

Val>> There are little creeks?

Tim Stone>> There are creeks that I've never seen before. I've been around this area for four years and they're flowing for the first time, at least this late in the year. When you're on the trail itself, it can't be beat. Whether it's hiking a mile off the trail to watch the sun set over the Pacific or, you know, being on the trail for two weeks, it's the exhilaration and sense of renewal that you get. I mean, these trails were originally conceived as an antidote to civilization, especially how it started on the East Coast. It was felt that the industrialized world was stymieing human nature. I mean, these are places to get away and to be renewed. Really, that's what it's all about.

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Val>> The latest edition of Smithsonian Magazine features an article on the Pacific Crest Trail if you'd like to read more. And the trail is beautiful, but remember, sun protection, water and, if you get bitten by a snake, fall down a cliff or end up in poison ivy: cell phone. I'm Val Zavala on the Pacific Crest Trail. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

It's an abandoned school, but does it hold one last lesson on saving lives?

>> One of the major problems with structure fires is firefighters falling through the roofs. Of course, when they fall into the burn, it's not very good on the firefighters. Sometimes it's a fatality.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.