04/19/05

LC050419

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.

[Film Clip]

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 we
define in the meaning of landlord-tenant relationships. I'm
Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

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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 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, 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. 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 as 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 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
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.


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 expedentially.

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".

[Film Clip]

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.

[Film Clip]

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.

Vicky Curry>> Next time on Life and Times --

How do you counter the bullish street gangs on city kids? Maybe
by giving them a gang of their own.

>> But we don't have weapons. We don't have guns or any kind
of weapons. We don't have headbands or anything. But we have
our uniform, our badge and our respect.

Vicky Curry>> That's next time on Life and Times.