A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Ex-Factory Worker Now Helps Disabled

When he was a factory worker, Louis Petrin started work by punching a clock.

On Tuesday, after the holidays, he returned to his job as a life-skills coach and was welcomed with hugs.

“He’s my friend,” said one woman, one of half a dozen developmentally disabled young adults with whom Petrin works every day. “He takes care of us.”

“Hey, Lou,” said another client, a young man. “You get a haircut?”

“Yeah, I did on Friday,” Petrin, 43, said. “It’s starting to get gray up there. I think I’ll dye it. How about I dye it blue. OK?”

Petrin teases and jokes easily with his clients as he helps them learn to read and write, shop, bank and develop other skills needed to live more independently.

“Sometimes when we’re really down, he makes us laugh,” said Gabriela Osorio, a fellow life-skills coach.

Working for the Easter Seal Society of Los Angeles and Orange County, Petrin may not get paid as much as he did when he worked for a Northrop Corp. plant in Newbury Park, but he said he feels better about himself.

“Something was missing,” said Petrin, a native of Rhode Island who came to California in the early 1980s thinking that the defense industry would offer more job security during the military buildup under President Ronald Reagan.

But after learning a lesson from East Coast factory layoffs, Petrin wanted to be prepared. He also wanted more out of life. He started taking classes at Antelope Valley College and two years ago completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Cal State San Bernardino. He started working for the Easter Seals in June, a year after he was laid off by Northrop.

“You have to make a decision that comes from within,” said Petrin. Involved in local churches and volunteer work as a youth, Petrin had never figured on making a career helping others. “But I just decided to go with something that I liked,” he said.

After working 9 to 5 for the Easter Seals at the Los Angeles County Regional Library in Valencia, Petrin drives to Cal State Northridge, where he is working toward a master’s degree in sociology.

He said he usually does not get back to his Lake Los Angeles home until after midnight. It means seeing little of his wife, Yvette, and his two daughters. But, Petrin said what drives him is discovering the potential within himself that he had never guessed existed when he was a factory worker.

“When you graduate and you get the cap and gown, and your professor finally shakes your hand, it’s the greatest feeling in the world,” Petrin said.

Although he has been accepted to a law school in Michigan, he said he may instead get a doctorate in sociology after finishing his master’s this year.

He said he uses his life as a lesson for his clients, encouraging them to better themselves despite their limitations. “First of all, it’s never too late,” Petrin said he tells them.

That makes him a perfect match for the Easter Seals, said Michele Johnsen, a spokeswoman for the society. “We always tell our clients you can do anything you want to achieve,” she said.

Working with people may also helped to balance out his work as a factory worker in the defense industry, he said. He sometimes wonders about the weapons he helped to build. “Maybe I’m giving back something that I took before,” he said.

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