Richmond or "Bait the Hook"

Richmond is a medium sized city that really gets a bad wrap. I think even more so than Oakland. I mean, in Oakland it is widely known that the "hills" are reserved for the upper class and upper middle class community while places like East Oakland and downtown Oakland are not the best paces to be walking around at night. Sad really. I mean there is always danger in every city it's just the media that magnifies the bad and usually not the good. Having said that Richmond has always had problem recruiting both Police and Fire personnel; this according to people in line, the very few people.

I half expected the Richmond application process to be somewhat like Oakland's, crazy long lines, overnighters and lots of people. But no. This was now the second least painful process. I got there a little late and had no application in hand. In fact there was nothing on the website that indicated the need for a written application. But I wanted to be prepared and ended up at Kinko's spending waay too much money on copies and time to use the Internet finding and filling an application. Well no application needed. I quite literally walked in, showed my ID, EMT cert, SS Card and BAM, I got a written test date immediately. So. Here we go.

How I Spent My Holiday or "Drive On"

I'm a little nutty borderline obsessive with a dash of OCD. I'm OK with it thought, ya know, I manage it and I make it work for me. I'm not going to take my dreams lightly. I'm going for it 1000% , No holds bar, balls to the wall (or ovaries in my case). I had received an e-mail notice about the City of Santa Clara and their hiring announcement, on Memorial Day, Monday. OK well technically I received it on Sunday night at 11pm; who in their right mind check their e-mail at 11 pm on a Sunday? I had to make a decision. I could pas this rare opportunity up or drive like hell on Monday and back to LA by Tuesday.Drive like hell. It was well worth the day off. I felt good to be home and I felt I had made a good choice. I got my application in what has to be the most painless application process to date. The drive was the highlight of my trip.

Like I said. I began my trip on Monday midday. In my excitement I had stupidly left my wallet with my roommate who I asked to carry it the previous night. She called me and without thinking to look at the gas gauge before I left I shot a look down as she told me she had my wallet. I was about to be one stranded mutha-----. I about a drop away from the fuel light coming on. I had no money, no ID, no gas and had put more than 100 miles between myself and LA. I thought for sure I was screwed. I ended up calling AAA. The guy came and explained that he could but me gas if I could provide him with a credit card number. Towing me back over the grapevine was going to take too long and I really didn't want to spend more time on the road than I had to. So I drove my happy ass all the way back 100 some odd miles over the grapevine and then up North. I made it and all was good.

Now to await the written test.

San Jose or How Hot Was It?

Initially I strayed away from applying here. Not because I don't do well in heat or very large cities but because I just don't know a lot about the department. Sometimes it seems unfair to me when people don't know about the departments they apply for. But I guess it doesn't matter when one is applying for one of the topmost competitive jobs on Earth. The written test was very similar to others. I felt prepared but in the end my scores reflected my level of NON preparedness. When I got notice of not passing, I actually wasn't too hurt. Dunno why.

Oakland FD or "How To Not Run a City"

I grew up in Berkeley. I know most of the East Bay cities pretty well. OK, well at least Berkeley, Kensington, Alameda, Oakland, El Cerrito and Emeryville. Having said that I know that a lot of the hyp over the safety in Oakland is highly blown out of proportion. I'm sure peopel in the midwest think Oakland is this terrible place where anyone is liable to get shot or at the very least shot at. I've always thought Oakland to be a normal city that just happens to always get bad publicity. Although there is truth to the high risk of being a Law Enforcement officer in that city. The fire department however was somewhat of a mystery. I did my reasearch and found out that I had a few friends who worked in the department.

Turns out Oakland is pobably one of the most forward thinking department in the Bay Area when it comes to Minorites and community involvement. Honestly, it was a bit shocking. The more I learned about the department the more exited I became when the prospect of even turning in an application came closer.

Fast forward to two days before the application deadline of Saturday Dec. 1st 2007. It was a known fact that Oakland was only going to accept 1000 applications. My friends had been calling and texting me. Informing me that the line was rapidly growing. Oh, and by the way, they started texting me on Thursday morning. I ended up sleeping on the streets for 2 nights along with close to 4000 other applicants from all over the nation. Oakland Police circled Ogawa plaza all night blaring a message over their loudspeakers stating that this line was not official and not approved by the City of Oakland.Basically saying that we were S.O.L. I braved the 45 degree nights for what had to be the most unjust and disorganized hiring process of all time.

I really didn't get much sleep. My true friends hung out with me during the middle of the night. We played games, talked and just hung out. It was in the wee hours of Sat morning that things got rough. People who had been standing at the back of the "line" which was now more of a mass had begun to creep up to the front. Before we knew it all hell was about to break loose.

There were now hoards of people at all 5 entry gates into the plaza. No one really knew which was the official entrance so people just crowded. It was awful. What this whole ordeal turned into is what is probably the one event that has marred the reputation of the City of Oakland and the Fire Department. People were being randomly picked from the crowd. People, like myself, who had spent the nights on the street were up against the knuckle heads that just woke up and came down. I personally saw a guy roll up on his motorcycle get picked within 20 minutes and was done in less than 45 minutes. I on the other hand was one of the last to be picked; it was 3pm on Saturday.