Program Puts Students on a Fast Track

By HECTOR BECERRA

Sept. 1, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Before she enrolled in the Los Angeles Urban League’s Automotive Training Center, Sonya Jones was languishing in the underbelly of the entertainment business--a dead-end job selling bogus services to actors.

“I’d wake up every morning, and I didn’t want to go to work,” she said. “I was in the business of telling lies.”

Then Jones, 26, recalled her teenage love of fixing cars, like that 1964 Ford Falcon she tuned and painted to save money. That love led the poker-faced high school dropout into the Urban League program, which trains and places about 100 people annually in entry-level automotive repair jobs.

On Monday, because of her academic excellence, Jones was one of two Urban League students chosen to be pit crew members at the new Ford L.A. Street Race in Exposition Park--a race that marks the first time the NASCAR stock car racing organization has come to Los Angeles.

About 500 students have graduated from the Automotive Training Center, a joint venture of Toyota Motor Sales USA and the Urban League, since it was founded in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas commended the center at a news conference Monday for its 86% success rate in placing graduates in jobs.

One graduate who attended the news conference, Lanier Gray, is now a manager at the Kragen Auto Parts store on Vermont Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles. “The program helped lay the foundation for my self-esteem,” he said. “I’m in management now, which was one of my goals when I came to the program, and I’m going to continue ahead.”

The second program member chosen for the pit crew, 17-year-old Ryan Goff, beats the Automotive Training Center’s director to work every morning. His love of cars took him straight to the center after he graduated from Cerritos High School.

Goff said he started working alongside his father doing repair work when he was 5.

“I’d clean up the rims, stuff like that,” said Goff. His goal is to be certified as a master mechanic. “I’d like to be driver. Maybe set up a race team some day.”

Ford L.A. Street Race events will begin Saturday and continue through Monday. Ken Schrader, Chad Little and Mark Martin, stars of the Winston Cup racing series, are committed to participate in Sunday’s NASCAR qualifying event, promoters say.

Jones and Goff are assigned to the pit crew of Willy T. Ribbs, who became the first African American to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 field in 1991.

“The kids here got here by a process of elimination. They’re the cream of the crop,” Ribbs said. “This sets a great foundation for them to own their own business, to become master technicians, maybe get into auto racing.”

Another NASCAR driver, Mark Mitchell, told the 40 students currently enrolled in the Crenshaw district program that he would consider some of them for jobs at his Brent-Air Towing Service.’

Mitchell brought his Chevrolet Monte Carlo race show car, which invited gawking and a flood of questions.

“Everything has to be spot-on in one of these cars or you’ll slow down or run into a wall,” Ribbs said. “And the wall wins every battle.”

Jones said the fact that she is a woman in an overwhelmingly male vocation hasn’t held her down. “I think I can make a better technician in many ways than men because I’m very detail-oriented.”

The rest of the automotive repair students will be guests at the race.

“The doors are opening for these kids,” said race founder William Burke. “We’re just glad to be here when it opens a little bit more.”