Life & Times - Transcript

About Us \| Contact Us

Life & Times Transcript

11/06/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

This bus driver does more than give kids a ride to school. She drives them to succeed.

Tanya Walters>> I go after the ones with the attitudes. I don't like you and I let them know I don't like you either, but that has nothing to do with what I see in you.

Val Zavala>> And then, the hours are long, the location remote, but the views are spectacular. Keeping watch over the San Bernardino National Forest.

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

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> This is the time of year when parents who can afford it take their college-bound kids on trips to check out prospective colleges. But for thousands of students who can't afford it, even applying to college is a stretch. Well, that's where Tanya Walters comes in. She takes kids on a trip that will change their futures. Is she a teacher? A counselor? A recruiter? As Toni Guinyard explains, she's none of these.

Toni Guinyard>> It's well before daybreak and the early morning silence in this Gardena bus yard is broken only by the sounds of drivers preparing to roll out. Just minutes into her shift, driver Tanya Walters takes part in the morning ritual, conducting the safety check on bus number 6308 before setting out on her fifteen mile long run. It's sun-up by the time Walters reaches the first bus stop. This is a job she and other drivers say they don't have to do, but they choose to do it. The reason? The kids.

Tanya Walters>> We're parents to these kids out here that don't have parents. We're role models to kids that don't have role models. We're teachers. We're their school bus drivers. We're whatever they need us to be.

Toni Guinyard>> Walters is the driving force behind the group "Godparents Youth Organization", or GYO. She founded it after she and some of the other drivers developed connections with the students who got on and off their buses every day.

Tanya Walters>> Your child steps on here. You don't know all the time what your child is capable of doing, but as school bus drivers, we see it. We see them when they change their clothes. We see that, when you drop them off, they get off. They don't even get on the bus. They walk away. Then you come and approach us like we're just school bus drivers.

Toni Guinyard>> They're more. Walters reached out to students, taking small groups on cross-country trips during their breaks from school. They were journeys exposing the students to a world outside their world, trips paid for primarily out of the bus drivers' own pockets.

Tanya Walters>> For the time being, we have to do what we have to do.

Toni Guinyard>> She scans the faces of the children who ride her bus searching for a child in need of inspiration, most of them oblivious that she's actually looking for the next student to invite on a road trip.

Tanya Walters>> I look and I listen for pain, so to speak. I look for the hopelessness. I look for the ones that have kind of like made up their minds to give up in life. I go after them. I go after the ones with the attitudes. I don't like you and I let them know I don't like you either, but that has nothing to do with what I see in you.

Once we pull that layer off of you, you're going to be all right because, if you're bad now and you don't have anything going for you, we help you change your mindset. You'll be fearless.

Toni Guinyard>> The next road trip is going to be a little different. All of the students will be high school juniors or seniors, fourteen kids from seven different cities, and all of them will have a 2.5 or lower grade point average. But what really makes the difference in this next trip is that the destination will be college.

Eddie Sampson>> We have city college, we have private college and we have the loans for the kids. They ain't no way they can not want to go.

Cathy Boulton-Taitt>> I think they're going to be thrilled and it's going to push them to want it even more and to do what they need to do in the high schools to get there.

Toni Guinyard>> Fellow school bus driver Cathy Boulton-Taitt is co-founder of Godparents Youth Organization.

Cathy Boulton-Taitt>> Through travel, Tanya and I feel that it would put it back into them to want to be more and to be somebody. But, of course, I think it starts with self. So if we start teaching them to appreciate themselves and what they can become, then going to college would be easier.

Toni Guinyard>> So they're heading to college to visit, a destination chosen after one student was accepted into Humboldt State University only to learn that financial aid for room and board had not been received.

Tanya Walters>> Here's a young lady that struggled, tried her best, got out of Crenshaw High, did everything she thought she was supposed to do and, a day or two before she was leaving, you're going to call her and tell her she doesn't have room and board?

Dale Evans>> We didn't even get to the school. They called us and told us. We didn't even get down there to the school and we had made plans to go to the school. They said, "Well, she doesn't have room and board." We have to find that off-campus. Well, that's going to be very expensive. It's like, "Well, we don't have anything for her and, besides, she's last on the list."

Tanya Walters>> She didn't know what to do, so what did she do? She came back home. So she never did attend Humboldt.

Toni Guinyard>> It was a tough lesson to learn. Walters changed the program because of it.

Tanya Walters>> We have extended our program to fly out with the kids that are in our program to be there the first day or two with them that go to college. They will know what they need to do to survive the first year of college.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a program Abi Ingleton had never heard of, but supports in theory. Ingleton is the Director of the Undergraduate Success Program at the University of Southern California.

Abi Ingleton>> College is about moving yourself out of your comfort zone. So when you are taking a student oftentimes who'd maybe never left their community that they've known all their life, that they've walked to school or taken the bus to school, that's all they'd known.

So when you take them out of that comfort zone and you give them a place and a mechanism and a means to have comparison, then that's what increases their landscape and increases their scope of thinking.

Tanya Walters>> "What test do you need to get out of high school?"

Student>> "The exit exam."

Student>> "SAT".

Toni Guinyard>> Walters is already getting her middle school passengers thinking about college.

Kyle Scott>> They expect great news from me because they want me to be very successful because some of my family didn't go to college and they want me to be one of the children or one of the family members that does go to college.

Tanya Walters>> "Name three historical black colleges. Who can name three historical black colleges?" I'm just trying to spark hope and ambition and looking for personal initiative.

Toni Guinyard>> Walters conducts her classes on the way to and from school. She has a captive audience and makes the most of every second.

Tanya Walters>> "Nicole, do you know the thirteen original colonies?"

Nicole Twyman>> I didn't know what to say when she started asking us because most of the stuff I knew, but I didn't know it at the time.

Diamond Jackson>> It helps us, though.

Toni Guinyard>> How?

Diamond Jackson>> How she kind of like tests us. Even today, we might have a test on the thirteen colonies or whatever they're called.

Toni Guinyard>> At the heart of each interaction with students is a lesson. During the cross-country road trips, the focus is on sharing what little they have with others who have even less. The excursions -- they've been to twenty-three states so far -- have been the subject of news reports and magazine articles.

Tiana Neal>> I saw Ms. Walters and I asked her if it was her and she said yes. I saw another one and I saw Ms. Walters and I asked her and she said yes.

Toni Guinyard>> The media attention gives the impression that GYO is a big, well-funded organization. It's not. Members of the grassroots group spends half the day behind the wheel of a school bus, the other half planning for the next journey and encouraging youngsters who have the same dreams.

Nyla Cargill>> Going to college and majoring in drama and acting.

Toni Guinyard>> So many other students do.

Senta Tyson>> That's my dream for my daughter is to go to college, to pursue her dreams and go to college.

Cathy Boulton-Taitt>> Some of them think that I don't care about them, but my thinking is that I wouldn't be out there if I didn't. I have a family of my own and I do care. I do care.

Toni Guinyard>> They are driving buses filled with dreamers, students who may one day see a bit more of the world thanks to a few godparents who are more than just bus drivers.

Tanya Walters>> "Bye. Have a nice day. Watch your step. Thank you. Watch your step, Nicholas. Bye, Daisy. Welcome back."

Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> Ready for some reruns? Well, there will be plenty of them to watch now that twelve thousand members of the Writers Guild are on strike. The WGA and television producers have failed to reach an agreement.

Hundreds of WGA members donned red t-shirts and protested outside studios across Los Angeles and in New York as well, but what exactly are the issues that couldn't be resolved? For a better understanding of the conflict, Saul Gonzalez talked with Ray Richmond, a columnist with the Hollywood Reporter.

Saul Gonzalez>> For those of us who live in southern California, but who aren't a part of the industry, who don't read your publication or its rival, Variety, set up some of the issues in this strike. What is it that the writers want?

Ray Richmond>> The main sticking point right now seems to be internet compensation for internet downloads of shows. More and more television shows, reruns of series on the networks and cable, are going to the internet.

Reruns are becoming endangered species on television, so it really isn't this futuristic far-off thing. Even right now, downloads are becoming the way reruns are shown and the way people are watching them if they missed things the first time around.

So as it stands now, no writer, no director or no actor has actually ever received a single penny for an internet download of their work. If the producers aren't willing to give up even a red cent of the internet pot of gold, then it's simply ludicrous. Of course, the writers have to go out.

This is the biggest one for them. This is pretty much the Waterloo. This is it for them. If they don't get the deal that they need for the future now, they never will, and the Guild should disband because they're doing a disservice for their members. The internet is now, it's the future, it's everything. It's where everything is going. If they blow this, if they drop this ball, they're pretty much screwed and they know it.

So they're in this for the long haul if they have to be. If they have to be in this for six or eight months -- hopefully, it won't come to that -- they're going to be there. That's why the producers are fighting so hard against even opening up the idea of compensation for this. They claim the business motto hasn't yet presented itself. We're not really sure what it's like.

Saul Gonzalez>> We don't know what we can earn on the internet.

Ray Richmond>> So what the writers should then do is call their bluff and say -- I mean, if I was in the negotiations -- "All right, then when you do finally figure out what the business motto is, let's make it retroactive to 2007 that we get our payments and our residuals and a piece of the pie."

Saul Gonzalez>> Are there other issues floating around out there that are particularly important to the writers?

Ray Richmond>> Well, there's also the issue with regard to reality television. Right now, they're considered unwritten and unscripted even though a lot of times people believe that there is writing going on, there are story editors on these shows.

Saul Gonzalez>> Wink-wink, unscripted.

Ray Richmond>> Exactly, ha-ha. So the writers are basically trying to, you know, get these things unionized so the people that work on them and write for them get benefits and have their back from the Guild basically. That's one issue. There's another issue with regard to DVD residuals and percentages for writers.

Saul Gonzalez>> Which is hugely lucrative now.

Ray Richmond>> It is hugely lucrative and they, of course, kind of sold that issue down the river maybe three or six years ago when it was just burgeoning and coming up. They get very little. Right now, the formula is they get pennies perhaps per unit sold on their work. Essentially, the producers are trying to push that same formula for internet downloads, although right now they're not even putting it on the table, we hear.

Saul Gonzalez>> I mean, to a lot of outsiders, this would seem to be a battle that pits one elite against another elite, the people who make six figures in Hollywood perhaps, the writers, versus those who make seven or eight figures. Is that right?

Ray Richmond>> You see, I think it's a fallacy that writers are all so incredibly well-heeled. Yes, you can make forty or fifty thousand, sometimes seventy-five thousand, for an episode of television, for a television movie and, for features, you go over six figures.

The rare exception is the writer who's making well into six figures. For the most part, they're struggling underneath a hundred thousand a year like the rest of us, middle class and upper middle class. And the residual --

Saul Gonzalez>> -- and who are those writers? Ninety-nine percent of these people, who do they represent?

Ray Richmond>> These are people who maybe will sell an episode to "Lost" or one to "Two and a Half Men" as a spec script or maybe on an assignment. They're not necessarily on staff. They're nomadic and itinerant and just trying to make a living, piecing it together one scrap of assignment at a time.

Saul Gonzalez>> Of course, the Writers Guild isn't the only organized labor organization in town in this industry. How do you think the other unions are going to react to their labor stoppage?

Ray Richmond>> The Directors Guild, for instance, and the Screen Actors Guild are already supporting the writers. They've already come out saying that there will be solidarity there. A lot of them aren't going to cross picket lines because they understand this is their future too. They don't have any piece of the internet pie themselves. They only have a tiny slice of DVDs themselves.

Their contract comes up in June, so they understand. If you hang together, there's a chance you won't hang separately. They need to let the writers know and let the industry know that this is all one giant community and not a splintered faction.

Saul Gonzalez>> But sometimes, it's like organizing cats, right? It's like herding cats.

Ray Richmond>> I understand, too, that a lot of big-time actors are coming out with ads in the trades in the next day or two saying that they fully support the writers' strike and some of them won't be on the set to do their required scenes.

That's when things really start getting nasty, when people that aren't even writers are saying, "Sorry, I have to observe this." Things don't get done and productions have to shut down and Hollywood feels it right here in the wallet.

Saul Gonzalez>> If this strike goes on for weeks, for months, what happens to each side? What happens to the producers and what happens to the writers if this is a real war of attrition?

Ray Richmond>> I think, right now, the movie industry can weather it far better than television. This is really a television strike. Movies are pretty much set for the next year or so with their scripts and everything is together for the schedules of the studios.

For writers of television, it's going to be tough. They're going to have to really tighten their belt to survive. Hopefully, there'll be some kind of fund to help out those who are the neediest.

The producers, I think, seemed to have planned for a long bitter struggle and seem to have a six-month kind of time frame here where they're like "We're okay for six months or whatever." Supposedly, if it lasts six months, it will cost the industry a billion dollars.

But it's the little guy even as much as the writers. I mean, by the end of November, it's not going to be an issue of who can go to work and who can't. Nothing in television will be produced. Whatever scripts that were there will have already been pieced together into shows.

By December, people will be like, okay, we're taking the holidays off. Then pretty much everybody is out of work including the grips and the photographers and the guys that hold the microphones.

Saul Gonzalez>> Food services.

Ray Richmond>> All the below-the-line people who really live paycheck to paycheck and hand to mouth. This is going to be disastrous for them.

Saul Gonzalez>> Ray Richmond of the Hollywood Reporter, thank you so much for being our guide through some of these issues. Really appreciate it.

Ray Richmond>> My pleasure, Saul. Thanks.

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

Val Zavala>> This fire season revealed something that many of us didn't realize -- how many volunteers are part of the firefighting effort, including fire lookouts that man the watchtowers high up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It's not for the faint of heart, as reporter Sheryl Kahn found out.

Sheryl Kahn>> To get to the Black Mountain fire lookout just north of Idyllwild, you drive along a winding gravel road, unlock the gate and head up the mountain like volunteers do every day. Their destination? This tiny metal cabin perched high above the treetops.

[Film Clip]

Sheryl Kahn>> Candy Kersey is one of the volunteers who keep records, track weather conditions --

Candy Kersey>> What we're doing now is checking the wind direction.

Sheryl Kahn>> And greet visitors who drop in from time to time or fly by.

[Film Clip]

Sheryl Kahn>> But most importantly, she and some three hundred others keep an eye out for fires. George Hall has been doing it for eleven years.

Candy Kersey>> "Hi, George."

Sheryl Kahn>> George and Candy often sign up for shifts that last just a few hours, but sometimes they stay overnight, George on his own and Candy with her husband. This time, they're teaming up to give us a rare glimpse into life at the top.

George Hall>> "San Bernardino, Black Mountain, out of service, in tower overnight."

Sheryl Kahn>> That means, as the sun goes down and the wind kicks up, they've lowered the flag and settled in for the evening. But the radio is always on because, if they do see flames, they'll be calling in.

George Hall>> I hope I don't miss any, but I'm happy when I don't see any.

Sheryl Kahn>> Accommodations here are rustic, a bit crowded tonight with Candy hosting a reporter in the tower and George sharing the garage below with the photographer.

Photographer>> "I brought a sleeping bag."

Sheryl Kahn>> There's no electricity here, but in the garage, there is this.

Candy Kersey>> We flush it just like any other toilet. It goes down. The only thing is, now the water's out. Got to take this off and fill this up with water.

Sheryl Kahn>> Outside the tower, a gorgeous sunset, star-filled sky and sparkling city lights.

George Hall>> It's just lighting up the ground all over the place. It's like looking at a big Christmas tree.

Sheryl Kahn>> While inside the tower --

George Hall>> This is like camping. I've been camping since I was a kid.

Sheryl Kahn>> To pass the time, a board game, lots of food and photographs of fires that volunteers have spotted.

George Hall>> It's an adrenalin rush when you spot a fire. You want to be the first one to report it.

Sheryl Kahn>> Sometimes, however, that thrill turns to fear like during the Sawtooth fire which cost one man his life and destroyed fifty homes.

Candy Kersey>> It does start out so small. You know, it starts out as just a single plume going up and then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. At the time we called it in, they said it was a flare-up from another fire and we just watched it grow.

Sheryl Kahn>> Except for the howling of the wind, this night is quiet. And the next morning, a spectacular sunrise.

Candy Kersey>> "Clear, 60."

Sheryl Kahn>> Candy, the first one up, gets the ball rolling in the tower, then checks on George in the garage.

Candy Kersey>> "Good morning, George. I'm bringing you coffee in bed."

Sheryl Kahn>> It's not the usual drill, but today they're celebrating everything that's special about this place from the kind of scenery that money just can't buy to the visitors that have passed this way, visitors of all kinds. What's this you're getting?

George Hall>> Peanuts.

Sheryl Kahn>> For what?

George Hall>> For the squirrels, my friends. Come and get it!

Sheryl Kahn>> Is that all you say to them? You don't tell them your problems?

George Hall>> No, I don't tell them my problems. I don't have any problems. Not when I'm up here.

Sheryl Kahn>> This is Sheryl Kahn reporting for Life and Times.

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> The wildfires did a lot of damage not just to homes, but to some churches as well. The Malibu Presbyterian Church, as you know, burned to the ground and, in Rancho Bernardo, a Baptist Church sustained some serious damage. But as Saul Gonzalez reports, religious congregations have responded to this worst fire season ever on all levels.

Saul Gonzalez>> It's been a common sight in the fire-damaged neighborhoods of southern California this week. Families, friends and volunteers sifting through the debris of burned down homes looking for possessions that survived the flames and can be returned to fire victims.

>> Not a lot, is it?

Saul Gonzalez>> In the ashes of this residence, volunteer workers, members of a local Rugby team, discovered some of the homeowner's jewelry.

>> Oh, it's still intact too. Look. The paper's not even burned.

Saul Gonzalez>> As residents come to grips with the aftermath of the fires, so too do houses of worship in the worst hit areas. This Baptist Church in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo saw much of its sanctuary destroyed when the roof caught on fire.

Steve Hannah>> It's going to be quite a restoration. They're going to have to gut the entire inside of the church.

Saul Gonzalez>> Steve Hannah, a church trustee, expects a long rebuilding process.

Steve Hannah>> It's probably going to take up to a year to fix the church, but fortunately, we have this building here. So we can worship in this building here. We're going to be okay.

>> "We're going to be marathon runners in this for however long people need."

Saul Gonzalez>> Church services here have been turned into forums where fire victims can share their harrowing experiences. Erin Johnson's house was consumed by the flames.

Erin Johnson>> "You know, it was absolutely terrifying for about maybe an hour, you know, when you're throwing your kids in the car. People have asked, you know, "Have you lost everything?" We did. We didn't have a chance to put anything in the car."

Saul Gonzalez>> Many houses of worship, like Rancho Bernardo's Community Presbyterian Church, have focused on practical assistance to fire victims from organizing a fire relief fund to offering experts on insurance --

>> "There's a website that I'd really like you to access. It's called United Policy Holders."

Saul Gonzalez>> To distributing free tools and other items so that fire victims can begin their cleanup efforts.

>> "I can get you some boxes too."

Saul Gonzalez>> Sheri Woodley, the Director of Family Ministries here, has become the church's go-to woman for post-fire emergency assistance.

Sheri Woodley>> Whether they're church members or not, anyone who would like to come here, we're trying to give them the resources. So we've built sifters, we've provided shovels, masks, gloves, water, anything to help them go through and find any type of treasure that they can.

Saul Gonzalez>> This church, like many others, is also sending out small teams of people to help victims clean up the wreckage of their homes and search for family valuables. This morning, one team has come to what was once the house of Mark and Brenda Fowler.

Mark Fowler>> "Thank you for coming. You bless us by being here."

Saul Gonzalez>> They quickly go to work clearing broken tiles from the collapsed roof, hauling out heavy charred items and combing through the ashes for that family photograph or heirloom that might have survived the blaze. Like so many residents and neighborhoods that burned, Mark Fowler is taking the loss of his home stoically.

Mark Fowler>> We really believe that the things we have really are gifts from God. Don't let me fool you. We have struggled some of these times with some of these things, but the fact that we're going to have to rebuild is not that big of a deal. He gave it to us to begin with. He'll give it to us again. He blesses us.

Saul Gonzalez>> For Life and Times, I'm Saul Gonzalez.

Val Zavala>> Our thanks to Religion & Ethics Newsweekly for that story. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> 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.

Sponsored in part by:


Home \| Features \| Arts \| Health/Science \| OC Edition \| L&T Blog \| Archives \| About Us \| Contact Us \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use © 2007 COMMUNITY TELEVISION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA