Interview with

Erin Healy,

California Conservation Corps 

By Sandra Martin

Vol. 23 Number 2,  2002

 Erin Healy is District Director in the Sierra Service District of the California Conservation Corps.  Healy began working for the CCC in 1980 as a 20-year old corpsmember, and has made her career with the agency, holding a variety of positions in locales throughout the state.  The Sierra Service District where she currently works encompasses Lake Tahoe and has 170 corpsmembers working out of two CCC centers. 

Women in Natural Resources:  The California Conservation Corps (CCC) has been in place for 25 years now.  Did Governor Jerry Brown start the Corps?

Erin Healy:  Yes, the CCC was Jerry Brown’s “brain child,” essentially.  It was kind of madness at the beginning—they opened something like 18 Centers in 18 months.  And then, in 1979, B.T. Collins came on board and really put the Corps on the map. 

There was a sunset clause that would have ended the CCC five years after it was initiated, but B.T. was a master at telling the great stories about CCC—about the good it was doing for the environment and for young people—and he was a master at telling these stories to the right people.  He was a great politician, and was instrumental in helping the CCC to become a permanent state agency in California. 

            The guy was a spiritual leader!  He was an ex-Marine, and after working with the CCC he became the leader for the California Youth Authority, and he had a lot of allegiances.  He died a few years back, and he was so well thought of in the CCC that we had 70 or more corpsmembers who lined the street outside the state capitol when his funeral was held there, and it was a pretty dramatic statement of what the Corps thought of this man.

WiNR:  It sounds like you were there, too.  How long have you been working for the CCC?

Healy:  Since 1980, when I joined as a corpsmember.

WiNR:  That’s very impressive—over 20 years with the same agency, and rising up through the ranks from corpsmember!

Healy:  I took two years off from the CCC during that time.  I took the Civil Service test for employment by the state, but my score was not too fabulous and so I had to wait a while to get a job offer from the Corps [as CCC employee and not as a youthful corpmember].  So, I did some other things, which in retrospect I see was very good for my development and growth as both a person and as a staff member for CCC.  It probably helped me to bridge the gap between being a corpmember and a staff member, because the reality is that there is a huge difference between these two spheres in CCC.

WiNR:  How old were you in 1980 when you joined the CCC as a corpsmember?

Healy:  I was 20 years old.

WiNR:  Did the CCC offer you college credit as well as work experience?  What educational benefits does the Corps offer it’s members?

Healy:  I joined the CCC after I had graduated from high school and had gone through over a year of community college.  I did indeed get to continue my college education through the CCC.  The Corps offers a high school diploma program for members who haven’t yet graduated, also. The CCC also currently requires everybody to go through Conservation Awareness and Career Development courses. 

            But the reason I joined was not to get further along in college, but because I was bored.  I really enjoyed the outdoors and had always been athletic.  My cousin had gone through the CCC and told me how great it was.

            The CCC teaches corpmembers all kinds of skills and knowledge, primarily through on-the-job training.  I attended an academy session and learned how to use different tools, learned about first aid and CPR, and some of the basics like making your bed correctly and walking in line. 

            I found that the CCC was a real challenge for a young woman.  It was truly a non-traditional job in 1980.  I never knew what I could do, or what I couldn’t do, until I joined the CCC.  The CCC turned into my own personal vision quest, as far as growing up.

            CCC does things a bit like the military.  We designate a lot of things by the “hat you wear.”  The color of your hat is the big deal.  You start with a blue hat when you’re a Corpsmember.  You can train to be a specialist, who wears a green hat, or a Crew Leader, who wears a red hat.  About 10 months after entering the CCC I spent another two months learning how to be a Crew Leader.

WiNR:  After the corpsmember first joins and attends the initial two-week academy, are they then assigned to a crew somewhere in California?  How does that work?

Healy:  We used to rent out the convention center in Sacramento and have all the corpsmembers from all over California who were going into the academy that month come there.  They would get their uniforms, get fingerprinted, do all the paperwork and then get an assignment to a Center.  Now we recruit corpsmembers and try to match their interests with their center assignments.  They can be assigned to any center in California.  The fingerprints are always run through the Dept. of Justice databases and all of that, to make sure that nobody convicted of a violent crime, or who is on parole, is allowed into the CCC.

            There were 18 Centers when I started as a corpmember, and now there are 11 Service Districts with a number of Centers in each.  CCC used to be 100% residential Centers, but is now a half-and-half mix of residential Centers and non-residential Centers and satellites.

WiNR:  Are all the CCC Centers in rural areas?

Healy:  No, we have Centers in urban areas, too.  There’s one in Los Angeles, one in San Bernadino, another in Pomona, one on Mare Island in the San Francisco Bay.  On the other end of the spectrum we have Centers in Fortuna and Klamath on the north coast in very isolated situations. 

WiNR:  How big is CCC?  How many corpsmembers do you have now?

Healy:  About 1800 right now.  We have a goal of reaching 2,000—we are in “recruitment mode!”

WiNR:  Has the membership gone up and down over the years?

Healy:  Yes.  When the economy is really doing well it’s harder to get corpsmembers.  We don’t pay much, and we work them very hard!  It’s a very tough, demanding program, and everyone doesn’t graduate. 

WiNR:  When someone joins, do they commit to a minimum amount of time in the CCC?

Healy:  We say that the program will last a year, but the “commitment” doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to stay in the CCC.  We have the right to fire them for breaking rules, and they can also quit.  But we encourage our corpsmembers to leave for positive reasons, like getting a good job or going back to school.

WiNR:  Can they re-enroll after a year?

Healy:  The way that this works is for the person to achieve what we call a “super grade,” which is either a Crew Leader or a Specialist. 

WiNR:  So, the people who do well are offered the chance to stay?

Healy:  Yes, we will offer them another year through either of these programs.  But everyone who does their one year deserves respect.  People who graduate in the CCC are not slouchers!  They are hard working and incredibly reliable.  They understand the idea of a day’s pay for a day’s work. 

            I don’t think you can find better workers than our graduates.  We work them hard!  We make them get up on time, be at roll call, clean their rooms, go to class after working really hard all day out in the elements.  And so, if you have a graduate, you have a good person—regardless of whether they had an extra year in the CCC, or not.

WiNR:  It sounds like a typical day for a corpsmember involves classes every night.

Healy:  That’s right.  A typical day starts with room cleaning; then breakfast and lunch-making; roll call; doing morning maintenance around the Center; doing some stretches and then getting on the crew bus; getting transported to a work project and working there all day long; coming back to the Center and having dinner; and then going to classes.  We have structured classes every night except Friday nights. 

            If a corpsmember doesn’t have a high school diploma, we schedule them into our high school diploma course.  Everyone goes through our conservation awareness class.  We also have a natural resource conservation series.  We have emergency training as well as First Aid and CPR.  We also have music, art, and a recreation program.  We have our Centers working with local recreation districts to provide opportunities and classes to corpsmembers.  We’ve got all kinds of things going on!

WiNR:  Who teaches these classes?

Healy:  Some of our staff teach, but mostly we hire outside contractors.  At the Tahoe Center where I work, we also offer some classes here through the local community college.

WiNR:  Did you take advantage of the college opportunities when you were a Corpsmember?

Healy:  I did, but I only took a few classes.  I had some college before I came into the CCC.  I was working on a fire crew, and it was impossible to pursue classes regularly in the summer, so I would do this in the winter months.  But then, I’d get pulled out to work on a flood!

            It’s tough to keep our corpsmembers working steadily in the classroom every night for a long period of time, because of the nature of our work.  We’re just always responding to emergencies.  We try to get the community college to work with us to offer specially tailored classes such as a two-week intensive study of this or that.

WiNR:  I know that the CCC helped with emergency response to some of the recent earthquakes in California.  Did you work in the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989?

Healy:  I was working in the Bay Area when it occurred.  I ended up being the Logistics Chief at one of our command centers.  But no matter what your rank, there’s important work to do as a CCC member when disasters occur.  In 1982, I was a Crew Leader and there were tremendous, destructive mud slides from heavy rains and flooding in the coastal range southwest of the Bay Area.  One day my crew and I had the dangerous job of extricating a body from the mud.

            Another year when there were more floods, I was stationed in the Sacramento River delta area, east of San Francisco.  I was the Operations Chief on that job.  So, as I progressed in the CCC, I took on different roles in these emergency situations.

WiNR:  CCC must be closely integrated with other state agencies that respond to emergencies such as forest fires and floods.

Healy:  We work directly with the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and the U.S. Forest Service.  Essentially, we are one of their resources.  For floods, we are one of the work units for the California Department of Water Resources.  For earthquakes, we are available to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  CCC has a command center and we operate under the Incident Command System that these other state and federal agencies also use.

WiNR:  It sounds like emergency response is a primary purpose for CCC.  Do you spend a lot of time training for it?

Healy: Our emergency response work is very important, but it really is only about 10% of what we do.  But yes, we train for it all the time. 

WiNR:  I think many natural resource professionals are familiar with fire fighting, but how do you train for earthquake response?

Healy:  It’s tough.  When CCC crews respond after an earthquake, we primarily demolish unsafe structures so they are no longer a barrier or a hazard.  We also handle setting up tent cities, providing fresh water, or running Disaster Assistance Centers. 

            So, we can’t train very well for earthquake response, but we train all the time on fire fighting and flood fighting methods and techniques.  In fact, the Dept. of Water Resources and the CCC have developed flood fighting techniques and they are taught throughout California now.  Flood management is basically directing water flow.  Our focus is often the levies along major rivers.  Some if it involves filling sand bags and using plastic sheeting for wave wash protection on levees.

WiNR:  When the CCC is not fighting floods or fires, what do the crews do?  What kinds of work do they undertake?

Healy:  The crews do a great variety of work.  Each Center has a specialty.  Our specialty at Placer is the construction trades.  We also have crews that build trails, plant trees, such as oak and alder, and do erosion control. 

            In our construction technology program we retrofit buildings and put in low-energy-use light fixtures and put them on motion sensors so that the lights are only on when people are around.  We do a lot of this in state parks and in other state buildings.  As you know, California is facing a tremendous energy crisis, and so we are in high demand to do these retrofits.  We also work for other state agencies painting, reconstructing buildings, and doing similar work. 

            The corpsmembers learn so much from this program.  We have curriculum that accompanies our work programs, and then the corpsmembers can be certified in specific areas or jobs, such as sheet rocking.  We’re excited about this new opportunity in CCC that allows corpsmembers to earn certificates that help them to get good jobs after their year with us.

WiNR:  Are the Crew Supervisors in this program certified in the different construction trades?

Healy:  Yes, some of those Crew Supervisors are contractors, actually.  Another emphasis for our Tahoe crews is fuels management.  The Tahoe area is “a tinderbox waiting to burn!”  There’s a massive bark beetle infestation in this area that has left many thousands of standing dead and dying trees.  Our crews are working to remove a lot of these, and then to do erosion control to reduce the run-off.  The clarity of Lake Tahoe is an issue of enormous importance in this region.

WiNR:  So your crews are out there with chain saws?

Healy:  For days on end.  We also work very closely with the state Department of Parks and Recreation.  We do a lot of campground refurbishment and lots and lots of trail maintenance.

            I never knew, until I joined the CCC, how technical trail work is—and it’s incredibly involved!  People cutting slabs of granite, for instance, and placing them “just so”—pretty neat!

WiNR:  Does the CCC only work on state-owned lands?

Healy:  No, we work on all public lands, and even some private lands.  We only work on private lands, though, if there is a public benefit to be accrued, and if the work provides skills training to our corpsmembers.

WiNR:  Coordinating the work of 1800 corpsmembers must require a lot of administration.  How big is the administrative branch of the CCC?

Healy:  There are about 130 employees working at the CCC headquarters in the state capitol, Sacramento.  These employees do everything from process payroll to create curriculum for our statewide corpsmember development program, and a lot more—recruitment, marketing, project development, accounting, and budgets.

WiNR:  Where does CCC recruit members?

Healy:  We recruit at high schools, continuation schools, community colleges, faith-based groups—pretty much all over the place.  We try hard to get a representative group in CCC, and we are successful.  In the CCC we have college graduates working next to people without high school diplomas.  Our recruiters do an excellent job of reaching out to the state’s huge, diverse population.

WiNR:  How many people have gone through the CCC in its 25-year history?

Healy:  Over 90,000!

WiNR:  That’s an impressive number!  Let’s change directions—tell us about you.

Healy:  I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, and grew up in Pleasanton, which is also in the Bay Area.  I went to college in Hayward, California, another town in the Bay Area.  My father was a California Highway Patrol officer, and I was interested in that line of work.  I took a number of criminal justice classes in college.  I also pursued an interest in construction trades and took classes in electrical work and carpentry.  But I really didn’t know what I wanted to do.

            So, I joined the CCC after I learned about it from my cousin.  I was stationed at the Placer Center where the crews focussed on fire fighting.  Half of the staff working there were CCC and the other half were California Dept. of Forestry.  I worked on fire crew and fought lots and lots of fires.  I was one of the first female Crew Leaders at the Center.  My boss used to tell me that “women can’t be Crew Leaders because they cry.”  But that just made me more determined to be one!

            I spent two years at Placer Center fighting fires, then left the agency after my two years were up and went to work for the California Dept. of Forestry on a helitack crew for a short period of time.  I really encountered a lot of resistance to women “infiltrating the guys’ club,” though, and I got pretty frustrated.  I left to work as a counselor with VisionQuest in the Gila Wilderness in Arizona for six months.  That’s a group that works with delinquent youth through outdoor education and backcountry treks.  Then I returned to CCC in April 1984, and got a job as a Crew Supervisor.

WiNR:  Why did you return to CCC?

Healy:  I always wanted to come back.  My Dad always wanted me to be a Highway Patrol officer, and so I did have a big decision to make, but I picked the CCC.  I felt that I grew up more in my two years with CCC than I had in my previous 20 years.  The CCC staff were very important to me as mentors and guides.  My first years with CCC were my own personal “vision quest.”  I learned what I was capable of doing.  I learned that I could do a lot of things that guys could do, and maybe even do them better.  I learned that I could be a leader, and that I was good at that.  The CCC became my extended family, in a sense.  So, I decided that I wanted to come back to the CCC and give back to new corpsmembers some of the excellent guidance and help that I got when I was in their place.

WiNR:  Did you return with a clear plan that you would make a career out of working with the agency?

Healy:  I don’t think I ever said that to myself.  I don’t think I say that even now!  [Laughter] No, that’s not true!

            I have always just moved ahead one step at a time.  I might identify that next step for myself, but that’s it.  And, I’ve had a quite varied career in the CCC.

WiNR:  Have you had opportunities to work in other agencies, but chosen to stay on with CCC?

Healy:  Yes, I have turned down a number of offers, deciding each time to stay with CCC.

WiNR:  So, let’s go back to your career history.  Where did you work when you came back to CCC in 1984?

Healy:  I was at Pomona as a Crew Supervisor, running crews on different projects.  Then two years later I transferred to the Bay Area Center and I was an in-camp Crew Supervisor, working on maintenance and mechanics projects.  Then, I took a training and development assignment for seven months and was a Business Service Officer, opening a new CCC Center in the Bay Area.

            About two years after that, I transferred to Santa Clara [south of the San Francisco Bay Area] and ran our Corpsmember development program for a while.  Next, I spent over a year at Leggett Satellite as Project Coordinator.  That’s a CCC Center on the far northern coast of California.

            After that, I moved to CCC headquarters and worked as the Alcohol and Drug Coordinator, and then became the Recruitment Coordinator for the agency.  I was promoted to Conservation Supervisor, which is a project manager, and worked in the Delta Service District in Stockton, in California’s Central Valley.  I spent about two and a half years there, then moved back into a recruitment manager job at headquarters again.  After two years in that position, I took a lateral move and managed half a district as Assistant District Director in Redding in the north end of the Central Valley.  Then I moved back to headquarters and was Fiscal Officer for the CCC.  After one year in that position, I was promoted in October 2001 to my current position as District Director in the Sierra Service District.  I’ve moved around California a lot!

WiNR:  That is a lot of moves in the last 20 years.  Is that typical of any career in the CCC? 

Healy:  It varies a lot.  We have both ends of the spectrum and everything in between.  I might be an example of one end of the spectrum, but we have folks who are married, have kids in schools and are really settled in one spot and want to stay.  It’s great to have people who want to stay in one place long-term, especially in positions like Crew Supervisor. 

            But on the other hand, it’s a good thing to have people like me in the agency, who run around the state and get all kinds of experience, doing a bit of everything.

WiNR:  What does a District Director do?

Healy:  I’m responsible for everything that happens at the Centers in my district.  I manage the staff at each of the locations, and make sure that the policies and procedures of the CCC are being implemented.  I’m responsible for insuring that the corpsmember program is working within our standards, and that all the corpsmembers are having a good experience with the program. 

WiNR:  Tell us where the Sierra Service District is, geographically.

Healy:  It runs from just outside Sacramento up over the Sierra Nevada to the Nevada border.  It includes Alpine County in the south and runs up into Plumas County in the north—more than 200 miles north-south.  It’s the most beautiful place in the state!

            The District includes three CCC Centers: the Placer Center in Auburn; the Tahoe Center at Echo Summit on Highway 50, just above Lake Tahoe; and the Greenwood facility.  This last doesn’t house any corpsmembers right now.  We’ve decommissioned it while we reevaluate what kind of program we want there.  We have 170 corpsmembers working in the District, with 35 staff.  I’m the manager for these staff.

WiNR:  That’s a large area to be responsible for—do you spend a lot of time traveling between the Centers?

Healy:  Yes, I spend a lot of time in the car, especially when the weather makes Tahoe tough to get to.  I typically spend a couple of days each week at the Tahoe Center, and the rest of the time at the Placer Center, and I often travel to headquarters in Sacramento for meetings.

WiNR:  Do you think the pattern of your career to date, that is, moving on to another CCC position after one to two years, will continue?  Do you think you will move onto something else in a year or so from now?

Healy:  It’s hard to tell, but I hope not.  I think this is where things happen—the Centers are where the important impacts are made, and I want to be a part of that.  I think Crew Supervisors hold the most important staff jobs in the CCC, because they are working directly with the corpsmembers every day.  They see the corpsmembers, talk with them, intervene in poor behaviors, praise good behaviors, are their mentors and their surrogate parents, and help them to try new things and encourage them to grow.

WiNR:  What’s the ratio between a Crew Supervisor and his or her crew?

Healy:  We try to limit crew size to no more than 15.  Some of the crews are smaller—those working in the construction trades have about 8 people on a crew. 

WiNR:  Do you have an opportunity, as District Director, to interact with corpsmembers?

Healy:  I do so every day!  If I don’t get an opportunity to hang out with the corpsmembers on any given day, I’m an unhappy person.  That’s what it’s all about—the corpsmembers.

WiNR:  The economy is not doing very well these days.  Has the CCC had difficulties keeping its share of the budget pie in the state?

Healy:  We are struggling with a hiring freeze, like every other department in our state, but most of our funding is secure for this year.  I did a lot of budget work myself, working with the state Department of Finance, when I was Fiscal Officer for the CCC. 

            I had a neat experience and was selected as a representative of the National Association of Conservation and Service Corps to travel to Washington D.C. in February 2001.  So, I got to walk the halls of Congress and talk to the Members about the CCC.  That was exciting!  It wasn’t hard for me to be a cheerleader for the CCC.  I grew up in the CCC, and really believe in it.

WiNR:  You sure do!  That comes through clearly!  And it also sounds like you’re content in your current

position.   

Healy:  I don’t think I’m going to be bored for a while now.  And, I do get bored—if things are going well, then I think, “OK, I’ve done my job here, what’s next?”  But I have a big job here, and I don’t think I’m going to be saying “what’s next” for a while.  There’s room for improvement, and I want to help us to get better, as a Center, as a District, and as an organization.

Sandra Martin is Editor of Women in Natural Resources.  Martin holds degrees in Forestry, Wildlife Biology, and Wildland Resource Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Montana.  She has been Editor of WiNR since February 2000, and before that worked in environmental nonprofit development, distance education, and for the U.S. Forest Service.