Elevator operator's overriding story: joy
LOS ANGELES — The loft-like offices at 5514 Wilshire Blvd. are largely the domain of the young, who work in jeans and T-shirts at flat-panel screens.
They are Web branders, search engine optimizers, e-tailers of underground clothing lines. They do the virtual jobs that became jobs only recently.
Ruben Pardo works in the building, too, in a job that dates to the late 19th century.
Pardo operates one of the last manual elevators in Los Angeles.
The young people are not easily impressed — but something about Pardo awes them.
Each morning, the 69-year-old arrives at the Art Deco tower in wool trousers, a button-down shirt and a sweater vest.
Six days a week, for just over half his life, he has been steering the same 6-foot-by-8-foot car up and down the same 11 floors.
"He's been in this elevator longer than I've been on the planet," said Mani Nabavi of digitalgravel.com on the fifth floor, who turned 35 just after Pardo's 35th anniversary.
Medical rounds
Coffee Memorial Blood Center will hold the following blood drives and Vein Drain T-shirts will be distributed starting Saturday.
Wednesday — 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Coffee Memorial Blood Center, 7500 Wallace Blvd.; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Amarillo College — West Campus, Small Bloodmobile, 6222 W. 9th Ave.
Thursday — 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Coffee Memorial Blood Center, 7500 Wallace Blvd.; noon to 4 p.m., San Jacinto Christian Academy, Bloodmobile, 501 S. Mississippi St.
Friday — 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Coffee Memorial Blood Center, 7500 Wallace Blvd.; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., ProAg/Wolflin Elementary, Bloodmobile, 2025 S. Hughes St.; 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Region 16 Headstart, Room B, 1601 S. Cleveland St.
Saturday — 8 a.m. to noon, Coffee Memorial Blood Center, 7500 Wallace Blvd.; 2 to 6 p.m., Spirit Halloween Store, Bloodmobile in the old Circuit City parking lot on Soncy Road.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius stopped by a Walgreens in Chatham on Wednesday morning to tour the facility and get vaccinated at the South Side store's pharmacy. Staff members wandered around wearing T-shirts reading "Arm
The urban youths, sporting spiky hair and tight T-shirts, have few memories of the oppressive Taliban regime ousted in 2001 by a US-led invasion, and grew up in a city where many people have grown rich on the war economy.
