Solano a hot spot for Army recruitments

Solano a hot spot for Army recruitments
Signups in other Bay Area counties low overall
By Dogen HannahMediaNews Group
Article Launched: 03/16/2008 07:45:09 AM PDT

Editor's note: The U.S. military has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than six years, by far its longest combat commitment since the Vietnam War. The war's duration has strained the all-volunteer force, including its ability to attract recruits. The Army in particular has had to bolster efforts to fill its ranks. MediaNews analyzed three years of data from the Department of Defense, Census and other sources to identify areas where recruits have been plentiful or scarce.

Staff Sgt. Jason Eck has been flipped off, cussed at and told to get out of town for doing his job.

The abuse hasn't deterred the two-time Iraq war veteran from donning his uniform, sliding behind the wheel of his government-issued Chevy Malibu and hitting the road almost daily in search of new soldiers.

Still, as a recruiter, he faces a daunting task.

Almost nowhere in the nation is it harder to find willing and able enlistees than in the Bay Area. The region's nine counties have the lowest enlistment rate of any large metropolitan area other than in and around New York.

Among Bay Area counties, nowhere is it harder to find enlistees than where Eck and two other Army recruiters try to do it.

"We're fighting to give the Army a good name in Marin County, " said Eck, a 27-year-old Brooklyn native. "It's really tough."

Just 53 Marin County residents enlisted in the armed forces in 2006, giving the affluent and famously liberal county of 249,000 people the lowest enlistment rate of any county its size in the nation. For that matter, it had the lowest rate of any county with more than 50,000 residents.

In Marin County and elsewhere in the Bay Area, recruiters run into similar obstacles: an unpopular war and commander in chief; potential recruits and their parents leery of combat; parents and teachers wary of recruiting tactics; competition from civilian employers; and counter-recruiting activists.

Although low in many areas, enlistment rates have been relatively robust in other parts of the Bay Area. People have enlisted in an array of communities even as the Iraq war, which enters its sixth year Wednesday, has dragged on and as the toll of dead and wounded service members has climbed.

Family traditions of military service, patriotism, cash enlistment bonuses, money for college, career possibilities and opportunities for adventure and travel still attract people to the military, recruiters said.

In Solano County, 289 recruits from Fairfield, Vacaville, Suisun City and elsewhere kept the enlistment rate relatively high in 2006. It was the highest in the Bay Area and higher than in almost half of all counties nationwide.

Activists protesting Marine Corps recruiters in Berkeley, where 15 residents enlisted in 2006, have blockaded a recruiting office and grabbed national headlines. Yet scores of people enlist annually in many Bay Area cities such as Livermore, Daly City, Santa Clara, Hayward and Antioch.

Even in Marin County, Eck said, success is possible.

"I stay positive, no matter what. Not everyone's going to join the Army. But the people who don't join, if they see me as a positive guy, they see the Army as positive."

Hard work

Even in the best of circumstances, recruiters face long odds.

Nationwide, about seven of every 10 prime recruiting prospects - people from 17 years old to about 25 years old - don't meet physical, educational and other minimum standards for enlistment, recruiters said.

Prospects who come unsolicited to recruiting offices tend to fall below those standards, recruiters said. Much of recruiters' typical 12-hour workday is spent on the phone and in the community searching for qualified applicants.

"It's challenging," said Staff Sgt. Craig Barringer, an Iraq war veteran and Army recruiter in Tracy.

"Two tours in Iraq, multiple combat situations - I've seen it all. And this is probably the most difficult thing I've ever done."

Support for the military is relatively high in Tracy, a San Joaquin County city of 80,000 residents that's become a greater Bay Area bedroom community. Recruiters there signed up 91 people in 2006, giving the city an enlistment rate far higher than almost every Bay Area city. Still, like recruiters everywhere, Barringer spends hours on the phone making scores of cold calls to prospects culled from online job sites, lists of high school and college students, newspaper advertisements and commercial databases.

"To pick up that phone over and over and over and (hear) rejection over and over and over - it wears on you," said the 30-year-old Modesto native. "You've just got to be willing to put out the effort."

It usually takes about 30 calls to land one appointment, said Staff Sgt. Brock Turner, commander of the Army's Tracy recruiting station. A skilled recruiter such as Barringer enlists one person for every six appointments, Turner said.

That takes more than phone calls.

Recruiters place brochures and fliers in stores, talk to prospects at home and, when welcome, on high school and college campuses. They aim to turn casual encounters into appointments or at least to introduce people to the idea of enlisting.

To reach its goal of signing up 80,000 active-duty soldiers this year, the Army wants each recruiter to enlist at least two people every month. Unlike in parts of the Bay Area, Tracy recruiters usually meet their quota.

"You have your dry spots here and there, where it just doesn't come through, Turner said. But this station usually does well."

In the schools

Somewhere in the lunchtime crowd of chattering Tracy High School students swarming around Barringer and two other Army recruiters one recent day could be a future soldier - maybe even several.

Most of the students were too young to enlist but not too young for recruiters to begin to interest them. Standing beside a table set with Army brochures, small footballs and basketballs, lanyards and pens, the recruiters handed out the trinkets while chatting with students.

"We don't expect to get a lot out of these table-days except for putting the information out there,

Barringer said. "Later on, it generally pays off."

In a year or so when it s time for students to make post-graduation plans, recruiters will call them. Federal law requires most schools to provide recruiters with the names and phone numbers of students, except those students who object.

Typically, no more than about 10 percent of students at Tracy s two big public high schools withhold their names, recruiters said. In contrast, about 80 percent of students at one of Eck s Marin County schools withheld their names.

Yet even at Tracy schools, recruiters are not universally welcome. The recent Tracy High School visit was the first time recruiters tabled at the school after parents and teachers complained several years ago.

Principal Pat Anastasio said students should be able to meet recruiters, but recruiters cannot have unlimited access. Recruiters must stay near their table and not pull students from the crowd, he said.

"What I tell them (recruiters) is: 'Let's have an understanding,'' Anastasio said. "We don't draft kids.

They come to you; you don't come to them."

Recruiters' reception elsewhere in Tracy also has been mixed. Barringer said he has been praised by

people and been ambushed by an old lady in Gottschalks who told me that everything about my life was wrong.

Counter recruiting

It was a debate, not an ambush, that Sgt. 1st Class Jose DeLao walked into one day last month at Oakland High School. The event pitted the Army recruiter against conscientious objector Pablo Paredes.

Paredes, a Bronx native and Navy veteran, told the student audience that he had high hopes for the military. His recruiter had promised him discipline, travel, money for college and training for civilian jobs.

"I wanted to get out of the ghetto," Paredes said. "I wanted to go get skills and get a job that could help my family."

After enlisting, Paredes said, he discovered that much of what he d been told was false or exaggerated. Learning to fire an assault rifle or throw a grenade, for example, does not help to land a job at Wal-Mart or as a teacher, he said.

"Whatever dream you re trying to chase in the military, there are other ways to chase that dream," Paredes said.

DeLao responded that the military offers people genuine opportunities, not just dreams. The native of Los Angeles' historically rough Watts district said that for him and many other people the military has been a path toward a better life.

"I had to join something or be a part of a gang," DeLao said.

Job training, college funds and other benefits recruiters describe are not a "hoax you to get you to join," DeLao said. The Army "can give you all the tools to be successful in life. It's up to you to use those tools to be successful."

The debate was part of a week of counter-recruiting events activists organized in Oakland schools.

The ranks of Bay Area counter-recruiting activists include students such as 17-year-old Amy Saechao.

She and three classmates at Oakland s Metwest High School have been visiting East Bay schools to provide their peers with another point of view.

"I have nothing against people who do decide to join the military," Saechao said in an interview before the debate. "But I feel like if they are going to decide to join the military then they at least should be given the right to know the entire story, rather than just the one-sided image they see through the media and recruiters."DeLao, commander of the Army s Alameda recruiting office, rejected the assertion that recruiters mislead people. Recruiters vigorously pursue prospects but not at any price, he said.

"It's business; it's recruiting" DeLao said after the debate. "But our intent is to be straight-up with these kids."

Sweeten the deal

The military has met most annual recruiting goals since the onset of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In 2005, however, the Army fell more than 6,600 recruits short of enlisting its goal of 80,000 active-duty soldiers.

The Army rebounded by retooling advertising to target parents and other adults who influence potential recruits. It also began enlisting more less-qualified recruits and raising enlistment bonuses.

Bonuses have helped Army recruiters such as Sgt. 1st Class Michael Mason succeed. Even in the 36-year-old South Carolina native s eastern Contra Costa County territory, where recruits are relatively plentiful, the money is attractive to prospects.

"That's one of the first things they ask about," Mason said.

For Beth Ingram, however, the potential for a bonus was just one factor to weigh as she and Mason went over her options one recent day inside the Army s Antioch recruiting office.

The 21-year-old Pittsburg resident aimed to pursue a civilian law enforcement career and thought that a stint in the armed forces, perhaps as a military police officer, would improve her prospects.

Then she learned that being an MP would require her to serve on active-duty for five years, longer than she wanted. So she began considering other jobs with commitments as short as 15 months.

"Choices. Choices," she told Mason as she struggled to make a decision. "I swear I'm just going to put these jobs in a hat and pull one out."

Dirty looks in Marin

In the North Bay, when the academic year began last fall, Eck braced for little to come of his recruiting efforts at the two Marin County high schools in his territory.

After all, he said, none of last year s seniors had expressed even the slightest interest in enlisting. Many teachers and administrators at best had seemed to tolerate his presence on campus, he said.

Elsewhere around the county, Eck had received "tons of dirty looks" while driving or walking. One passerby yelled "get the hell out of here and punched Eck s car on a downtown San Rafael street.

"A lot of people just don t believe in the (Iraq) war," Eck said. "So, they pretty much are going to try to avoid a recruiter - like I have leprosy or something."

Eck enlisted no one for several months last year. Then he enlisted eight people between November and February.

He credited the turnaround to spending more time on campus getting to know students, career counselors, teachers and administrators. Also, they got to know him and his methods.Barbara McCune, college and career counselor at Sir Francis Drake High School, said Eck showed that he s not a pushy recruiter. "He's just here to answer questions and talk about careers. He s not out there to make numbers."

One of Eck's recent recruits was 18-year-old Jay Fallon, who begins basic training in July. The Drake senior said he enlisted to serve the nation and get money for college.

Fallon said his parents were fearful he might be hurt or killed but have come to understand and support his decision. His classmates and teachers remain divided.

"A lot of people support me and say, ]congratulations,'' he said. "Some people think it's bad and I'm stupid."

So far, Fallon has been Eck s only recruit from Drake this year, but two other students there and more elsewhere have shown interest. From Eck s perspective, things have been looking up in Marin County.

"From all of my schools, left and right, I've got guys asking me about joining the Army," Eck said.

"This year has been an excellent year."