LOS ANGELES _ You can't hide in the back. You can't sneak in late. Big John will make you answer.
Your name. How you're feeling. Where you've been. Where you're headed.
Kyung is one of the first to speak. He is electrified. Everything is going right. He has an important interview tomorrow.
Big John howls in appreciation. Then he asks, "Ever been in that special place?"
"Yes, sir, I have. Altogether, about 10 years." Kyung's face is weathered, as if marked by the troubles he has seen.
"Ten years, all right," Big John says. "And you're about to become an electrician."
Until the novel coronavirus hit, anyone who needed a job, some encouragement, or a way to avoid past mistakes, was welcome Thursday nights in this church basement at 35th and Normandie in South Los Angeles, an area plagued by gang violence, a lack of good-paying work, the revolving prison doors.
Many have been to what Big John calls that special place, that gated community. By his calculations, the 50 or so people in the room on this night have collectively logged about 400 years behind bars.
As part of a program called 2nd Call, they learn how to become union electricians or carpenters, how to keep those jobs, how to confront trauma and depression, how to be good fathers and mothers, spouses, sons, daughters and friends.
Big John, whose full name is John Elliott Harriel Jr., taps one person after another, eliciting snapshots of their lives with a quick patter of questions, as he does on this night, before social distancing kicked in.
Exams passed, careers made _ it is a mantra of success, relished again and again. If he can do it, so can you.
"How you feel, Sal?" Big John asks.
Sal feels blessed. He is finishing electrician boot camp.
"OK, how'd you get that?" Big John says.
"Right here at 2nd Call," Sal responds.
"You ever been to prison?"
"Yes, sir."
"How much time you do?"
"Just finished doing 14."
"Man, your life is about to change, buddy."
