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Hard work turns into second careers

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Photo by Cat Szalkowski-Patneau

Officer Kristi Beyer was one of four new officers hired out of 400 applications at the end of 2009. Beyer decided to switch careers and studied criminal justice after being laid of from Leer shortly after the GM Plant closing in 2008.

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Photo by Cat Szalkowski-Patneau

Officer Beyer logs notes from the mid-morning duties her and her fellow officer perform at Rock County Jail. "I love it...it's constantly doing something different and that's exactly what I wanted," Beyer said of her new career.

Photo

Photo by Cat Szalkowski-Patneau

Carol Jensen sits in a student services study room as she prepares to take her placement exams at UW-Rock County. "This is just the perfect time for me [to go back]," Jensen said of returning to school to obtain her associates degree.

JANESVILLE — For 13 years, Kristi Beyer worked second shift at Lear Corp., bolting safety belts onto car seats bound for Janesville’s General Motors plant.

The pay was good, but she was never exactly thrilled with the work. Then, in the summer of 2008, the economic recession and production cuts at GM spelled an end to her job at Lear.

Nearly two years later, Beyer, 37, of Janesville, is wearing a new uniform.

As the black patches on her tan shirt attest, she is now a correctional officer for the Rock County Sheriff’s Office.

It’s 3:15 p.m. on a Sunday, and Beyer just got off work from first shift at the county jail, where she spent all day monitoring and servicing petty criminals, drug offenders, even accused murderers.

There’s weariness in her voice, but underneath it crackles with excitement.

She’s working again.

“The biggest thing I can say is that I’m proud,” Beyer said, pointing to the name placard stitched on her shirt. “Every day that I put on this uniform, I’m more and more proud of it. I’m doing what I set out to do. I’m helping keep the community safe.”

While Beyer began her new criminal justice career just a few weeks ago, her life change stands out. In a local job market that’s hit blue collar workers harder than almost anywhere in the country, Beyer has taken a risk, leaving behind her old career path and her comfort zone to re-educate and reinvent herself

For Beyer and her husband, Bob Beyer, 46, there was little alternative to change. Both she and Bob, a welder at Lear for 15 years, were laid off in the second half of 2008. When their work ended, their benefits and their combined pay of about $40 an hour disappeared, Beyer said.

“A lot of people would start at Lear and they’d say, ‘I’ll only be here a few years.’ But what kept you coming back was the money. It kept you there. It gave us a nice life,” Beyer said.

But like other dislocated local workers mired in the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the life the Beyers had built was eroding fast. The couple had a mortgage to pay, and they had also started caring for Beyer’s mother, Linda, 62, who had health problems following a stroke.

Around the same time, their son, Josh, 21, left to serve with the military in Iraq.

“All these things just kept happening. They just kept piling on our plate,” Beyer said.

Still, when Beyer learned she’d lose her job at Lear, part of her was excited. She’d always wanted to study criminal justice. Now was her chance.

While collecting unemployment, the couple started taking coursework under a federal dislocated workers program—Beyer in criminal justice at Blackhawk Technical College and Bob in HVAC and industrial mechanics.

In May, Beyer graduated from Blackhawk with honors. In coming months, she plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Bob will finish his certification next spring, Beyer said.

Beyer’s plan worked, but there were no guarantees. She was one of just four correctional officers hired this spring by the Rock County Sheriff’s Office. More than 400 had interviewed for the jobs, she said.

Six days after graduation—but nearly six months after she began an intensive selection processes with the sheriff’s office—Beyer got an offer for a job at the jail.

“I say it’s like winning the lottery. I just feel fortunate that the (sheriff’s office) gave me a chance,” Beyer said.

‘It’s not luck’

For another dislocated local worker, Carol Jensen, 48, of Janesville, Beyer’s story might provide hope. Jensen and Beyer have different backgrounds and goals, but they share a common trait: a willingness to try something new.

Jensen worked at Janesville’s former Sanford Corp., which owns Parker Pen, for 18 years, until the company left the city in 2010.

In 2008, when cuts at Sanford had prompted rumblings within union ranks about the plant’s future, Jensen applied for an opening in Sanford’s business office. She traded 16 years as a union employee at the plant to learn an entry level office job as a coordinator for the company’s retail website.

“I decided that it would be better to risk applying for that job and lose it than to stay with the manufacturing because at least then I’d have increased skills,” Jensen said.

The move paid off until August 2009, when Sanford publicly announced it was considering a move out of Janesville to consolidate operations. By February 2010, Jensen was without a job.

With the help of federal funding for dislocated workers, Jensen now looks to build on what she’d learned as a retail coordinator at Sanford. Although she hasn’t planned her new career, Jensen plans to start business classes this fall at UW-Rock County. She said she’ll figure things out as she goes.

Jensen, who never went to college, is celebrating her 30th high school reunion this summer. But in the fall, she’ll be cracking the books again.

She said she’s nervous.

“I haven’t seriously studied for three decades,” Jensen said.

Still, Jensen’s ready for the change. Her two sons are grown, and her husband has managed to hold onto his job. They have insurance, she said, knocking her knuckles on a wooden desk.

“Right now, everything’s falling in place to do this. The timing’s just right,” she said.

Even though federal funding and her husband’s employment will make it easier to return to school, Jensen resents anyone calling her “lucky.”

“It’s not luck. These days, nobody is lucky to have a single-income household,” she said.

Ask Kristi Beyer if she considers her subsidized education a “free ride.”

She’ll tell you the federal government didn’t hand her a flawless grade point average; she earned it. Jobless benefits didn’t give her the energy to pull all-nighters while working on 18 hours of criminal justice coursework she took each semester at Blackhawk.

And no government program could fend off Beyer’s nagging self-doubt, which she said didn’t fade until the sheriff’s office offered her a job.

“Sometimes, I worried I wouldn’t have what it took to do the work, that even with schooling, I wouldn’t make it. I worried I was too old,” Beyer said.

‘Janesville’s changing’

Beyer said being a correctional officer isn’t easy. It’s physically demanding and can be stressful. One of her main jobs is transferring inmates for court hearings or medical services. During contact with inmates, she can get physically attacked, and she’s often verbally assaulted.

All that for a pay cut. At an hourly rate of $16.47, plus benefits, work in the jail pays about five dollars an hour less than what Beyer once earned at Lear, she said.

But Beyer said it isn’t all about money. It’s about opportunity and being satisfied with work.

“I may make less, but I’m not settling for less,” Beyer said. “For the first time in years, I enjoy going to work. I’m excited, and I’m energized. Weird, isn’t it?”

Jensen said as she forges ahead with schooling, she concedes two things: She might end up on a career path that pays less than what she earned before; and she might have to travel for work.

For the right job, Jensen said she’d commute as far as Milwaukee.

“The world’s changing. Janesville’s changing,” Jensen said. “You can’t say, ‘Okay, I’m 48, so you need to pay me what a 48-year-old gets paid.’ You might have to do some things a different way.”

Jensen said many of her coworkers at Sanford are eligible for government assistance for re-training or re-education. But Jensen said fewer than half of those she’s kept in touch with plan to return to school.

The prospect of a commute, a pay cut and fear over taking coursework are a few deterrents, she said. But she said she believes the biggest deterrent is the lack of job openings.

“We’ve had such a loss in the area. We’ve got thousands of people competing for $7.50 an hour jobs,” Jensen said.

Beyer said she worries about the stress of corrections work. She knows burnout in criminal justice is high, but she’s been trained to handle the rigors of the career. Already, she’s learned there’s an internal support system between officers.

Beyer said the future won’t be easy, but her confidence and her self-image are growing every day. Her momentum has given her husband renewed hope in his job search, Beyer said.

Beyer’s not taking baby steps away from her past. Her uniform is more than a costume. She’s an officer—and she’s walking tall.

“For years, my mentality was, ‘I’m just a factory worker. That’s all I am, and that’s all I’ll ever be,’” Beyer said.

“Well, I’m not just a factory worker. I can be anything. It’s crazy, but I can say that now.”