Ross Egan:  

It's amazing how the older we get how those little subtle changes start sneaking in a little more each year. Some of us a little sooner or later than others. Like the gray hairs, a few more pounds here and there and just the fact that it takes a little more time now to recover from a really great Super Bowl weekend, Fourth of July weekend or a really fantastic trip to Mammoth in the winter time. I guess guys in particular always think we're invincible and nothing will ever slow us down. That fact is that is does happen. After attending Prince of Peace Lutheran School on Ball Road in Anaheim for grades K-4 (1963-1968) and St. Paul's Lutheran School on Bowen Street in Garden Grove for grades 5-6 (1968-1970), I was finally allowed to go to public school after all those years of rigid discipline and never-ending rules and entered Lampson Junior High School on Lampson Avenue in Garden Grove for grades 7-8 (1970-1972) along with all the neighborhood kids that were my age I had known all that time. Talk about culture shock! I just got out of Christian schools after 7 straight years and went straight to the Garden Grove public school system at the end of the 1960's!! It was an incredible time and I met some of the coolest people I've ever known there. I eventually entered Garden Grove High School for grades 9-12 from (1972-1976). Anyway, I'm 6' 0" and 210 lbs now and try my best to maintain it through time spent at 24Hour Fitness 3 nights per week in Yorba Linda, every week without fail if possible. Not much time left for alot of that stuff sometimes as I have been working 2 jobs since 2000. First of all, right out of high school in 1976, I began working full-time at a company called Penhall Co. They were located on Lincoln Ave and Cresent in Anaheim. In fact, the owner's son was Bruce Penhall the speedway motorcycle racer in the 1970's and early 1980's. They were a concrete and asphalt cutting and coring company. For an 18 year old kid right out of high school it was a great job. The pay was $9.75 an hour in 1976 and I was a member of the Operating Engineers Union. We used jack-hammers and concrete cutting machines all day. It was simple. Before you leave work each day you would walk up to the dispatch office and the field supervisor would tell you where your next job was located at. When you came into work the next day, you just gassed up your truck and took off. After about 5 years of that, I got an opportunity to work in the manufacturing department where they built the cutting blades. I worked there until 1988. There were asphalt cutting blades, concrete cutting blades, masonary cutting blades, wall saw cutting blades and "groover" cutting blades. Those were used on the freeway. You may have seen them. Anytime you are driving down the freeway, you will notice about 160 narrow lines cut into each lane of the freeway. That's so when it rains the water will run into those "grooves" and not stay on top of the pavement where you could slide. In 1984, I went back to Fullerton JC for business and in 1988 I was hired at Ricoh Corporation on Redhill Ave and Warner Ave in Santa Ana as Production Control Coordinator. Ricoh was a Japanese company that manufactured cameras and thermal ribbons and labels for frozen foods. I got all my computer training there for free. They used to have seminars every month on Microsoft Windows, Powerpoint and so on. I worked for Ricoh until 1994 when I was hired by a large vitamin and nutritional supplements manufacturer in Tustin as Data Control Coordinator. I was also very fortunate in 2000 when my ex-wife's sister in-law told me one afternoon at a family birthday that United Parcel Service was hiring part-time at night. Realizing that there may be a chance to become a UPS driver eventually at a yearly salary at the time of $50,000 - $60,000, I went to the UPS facility on Ball Road and State College in Anaheim in the summer of 2000 one night and attended the open enrollment that they have every Thursday night. I noticed immediately that the room was full of 18,19 and 20 year old kids and really nobody even close to my age (42) at the time was in the room. Even as my salary at my day job was decent I was thinking the extra money from UPS would be a big help as my wife named Trang who is also Vietnamese and whom I married in 1999 were looking to purchase a house and move out of the condominium we had in Rancho Santa Margarita. She had moved with her family from Vietnam to the United States in 1984. Her father was a captain in the South Vietnamese Army (non-communist) and in 1975 a few weeks after the fall of Saigon, several armed North Vietnamese (communist) soldiers with an officer present came to their home and dragged him off into an Army transport truck full of other captured South Vietnamese Army officers and off they all went to a prison camp in the jungle (just like the Chuck Norris movies) never to be seen or heard from again until about 2 years later when her family finally got a letter from the new communist government saying they could come and finally visit him. They had to take a bus from Saigon and travel hundreds of miles to the area where the prison camp was located. Once the bus stopped, Trang, her family and many other people wanting to visit their captured family members also had to walk for 2 days through the jungle and countryside to get to the camp. He only weighed about 90lbs when they finally saw him for the first time since his capture 2 years earlier. He weighed 170lbs before he was taken prisoner. He was eventually released and recovered and as I stated earlier they all got to the United States in 1984 and the family including children and grandchildren have since really flourished here in the US all attending college or high school and getting the best grades. Her father was lucky. He only spent 2 years in the camp. Many of the men he was in prison with were kept there for over 7 years. Many prisoners died in the camp of malnutrition and dysentery. Her father was also forced to bury some of them out in the jungle. Some of the men he buried were also friends that served in the army with him. I'm sure it must have been miserable. Anyway, I was not called back to work at UPS after that first open enrollment night. But while I was there that night, the security guard told me that they usually only hire the younger kids because the work is so hard. He told me that there was a temporary employment service that operates inside the building and if I really wanted to work for UPS one day I should go to that service in Orange called Spherion and see what it was all about. I was actually hired by the temporary service the next day and worked as a temp every night for 2 years inside the hub at UPS and have been there ever since eventually becoming a full-time permanent employee of UPS in 2002. I became the supervisor for the Primary Unload section of the facility in 2004. That's where the big semi trucks back in the 53 foot trailors up against the many bay doors that are located all along the sides of the facility to be manua...Expand for more