NORTHDALE - Sam Rivera arrived five minutes early, extending a coffee mug to advertise his new business. He seemed disappointed when I couldn't accept it. Rejection, any rejection, wears painfully.
For 15 years Rivera was an aircraft mechanic, the guy you rely on to make sure your plane stays together. US Airways paid him a good salary. Combined with what his wife earned at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, it afforded him a comfortable life in Northdale.
Then the bottom fell. After waves of rumors and false assurances, US Airways cut back on its Tampa International Airport hangar operations, furloughing Rivera in November.
He remembers the day in excruciating detail. The absence, outside, of all but one plane. The routine stroll to the bulletin board, his morning cup of coffee. The break room, so quiet. The co-worker who told them an announcement would come at 11 a.m.
The rush of emotions, the "what-will-I-do-now," the glances he traded with co-workers who, he is sure, were thinking the very same thoughts.
"I'll bet there were some people who wanted to cry and didn't," he said. "And I think I was one of them."
He insists his is no sob story, and in fact it isn't. Like many tales of post-Sept. 11 layoffs, it's one of resilience and self-discovery.
Rivera, 40, works today as a home inspector. He hires himself out to families making the single largest purchase of their lives.
It's his job to look a place over, feel the walls for soft spots, eyeball the faucets for leaks, walk the floors for bumpy foundations.
He found his background helpful, despite the obvious differences between a Boeing 737 and a single-family home.
"I just have an eye for it," he said. "I can see a shadow out of the right side of my eye and know something isn't right."
But the self-employment part takes getting used to. "For 15 years I never had to look for a job," he said. "I didn't even know how to fill out a resume."
It wasn't his first choice. He hoped to get work at an airline.
But, after cutting back on cable and restaurants and all those other extras we take for granted, he had two facts: There were no jobs, and all the major airlines were hurting financially.
An acquaintance at the Carrollwood Area Business Association had told him about the money he could make inspecting homes. Rivera, who had worked construction jobs in his youth, had taken a certification course at Tampa's Inspection Training Association while still with the airline. Already, he had inspected homes to bring in extra money.
He launched Gulf Coast Home Inspections, got a Web site (http://www.gulfcoasthomeinspections.com)">href="(http://www.gulfcoasthomeinspections.com)">(http://www.gulfcoasthomeinspections.com) and tried to develop relationships with brokers in the area.
He charges $150 to $375 for a couple hours' work, depending on the size of the home. The response has been slow, he said. Technically a broker cannot refer a home buyer to a particular inspector. The most they should really do is include your name on a list. And he suspects many brokers he has approached already are working with other inspectors.
He wonders if he is too thorough for his own good. "If you find too much, they don't want to use you," he says. "But if you don't find enough, you're in a whole lot of trouble."
Mentally the experience has been a roller coaster. He both acknowledges - and fears - that things "could be a lot worse."
His wife, Julia, has been "a rock," he said. "She always has had faith in me because she knows I'm a go-getter." His 10-year-old son "understands, but doesn't understand."
Rivera has learned a lot about himself these months, and not all of it is good. "When your back is up against the wall, you find out what you're made of," he said, laughing. "Sometimes, man, I don't feel like getting out there. But I've got to do it."
He knows that the economy and the war in Iraq bode poorly for the airline industry.
So as much as he dreads rejection, he keeps knocking on doors. Trying to convince people he is their best defense against loose tiles and faulty wiring and a soon-to-fail roof. Convinced, as much as anything, in his ability to get the job done.
As he puts it: "I'm going to look at the house like I look at an airplane."
[Last modified April 3, 2003, 17:31:35]
North of Tampa headlines
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
