The first thing Ron Anderson (second from left) did after NUMMI closed was go hiking with family and friends.

Ron Anderson worked at NUMMI, for 12 years, but he wasn't an employee. He co-owned one of a host of supplier companies that fed into the plant with parts and services.

Anderson did quality control.  "If they had a quality problem in the pipeline, then we would help filter those problems out, before they got to the production floor."

Like many subcontractors, Supplier Link Services was attached to NUMMI at the hip.  That contract constituted 90% of its business.

When NUMMI closed, Supplier Link Services went from a company employing 30 people to one that employs three.  Anderson's sister runs it now. "They took that 10% and they're trying to grow it into a larger business."

Supplier Link Services, like many suppliers, applied for Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) benefits. American workers deemed to have been negatively impacted by the vagaries of international trade can, through this program, get help with everything from relocation reimbursement to job retraining.  Some American workers. A company going under has to apply to the Department of Labor for certification/enrollment.

NUMMI applied in late October, along with two other supplies represented by the United Auto Workers. The Labor Department approved their petitions within one month. That was a "record" response time, according to people who play in these waters. But the sudden surge of activity appeared to exhaust the DOL. The NUMMI suppliers and their employees didn't get certified till summer.

Anderson claims it wasn't just the DOL that sat on those supplier requests, but the NUMMI point person at the Alameda County Workforce Investment Development Board (ACWIB), who collected the applications before sending them on to Washington DC.

That would be Tony Castillo, so I e-mailed him to ask about that. His response:

Once DOL certified NUMMI, the company provided ACWIB with their suppliers’ contact information. We then reached out to them in early January 2010 with a template that we developed to capture their particular information. As the companies were returning the completed templates to our office we were using their information to complete TAA petitions which we then submitted to the State of California for their filing with DOL. The petitions were typically submitted to the State the same week that the completed template was returned to us by the supplier company.

Let’s also remember that it was expected that most of the suppliers were going to still be in business until April 1, 2010. Most of the suppliers’ petitions were submitted in January but the DOL did not begin certifying these petitions until late in March and through the summer. Once the suppliers realized that DOL was taking longer certifying their petitions they began applying political pressure through the California congressional delegation to get DOL to move approving petitions more timely, to no avail. DOL commented that they had been inundated by petitions in a national scale and they lacked the resources to make speedier decisions.

Whatever the case, Supplier Link Services' application was approved, and Anderson was then able to apply.

Anderson had a new career path in mind. After thinking deeply while on backpacking trips to Tuolumne Meadows and the like, he knew wanted to be a high school chemistry teacher.  That would mean getting a teaching credential, of course.

But at his local one-stop career center in San Francisco, where the EDD directed him to go, the person he talked to told him he could not approve Anderson's request because the state of California did not have a budget at that time.

Hunh? The TAA is federally funded, which is what Anderson told the guy.  "But the state gets the money from the feds and the state distributes it. That was the answer I got from the person I assumed was the expert on the subject." Anderson didn't leave it there. He appealed, but even after a review by an administrative law judge Anderson is paying out of pocket for classes at the University of San Francisco. Price tag: $30,000.

The thing is, the San Francisco counselor may not have talking out of his hat. Here's Castillo again:

During the budget impasse of last summer state employees (TAA Specialists [employed by the California Employment Development Department]) were directed by the Controller that they were not to enter into training contracts until a budget was adopted. In anticipation to the deadlock in Sacramento, local areas (including the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Solano and Santa Clara) received “bridge” funding from the state in the spring to pay for the training of TAA ... until a budget was signed.

Since the person went to get services to an area that did not receive “bridge” funds the TAA specialist could not do much for him except refer the person back to one of the other areas.

Now, the guy at the One-Stop in San Francisco did tell Anderson to go to the NUMMI Reemployment Center in Fremont, and Tony Castillo suggests the same for anybody else displaced by NUMMI. That's because the state staffed that center with six people who really know the nitty gritty, and when you're dealing with two levels of bureaucracy, state and federal, you want to talk with people steeped in the specifics of your situation.

"The state does not have enough TAA specialists to serve the need," Castillo says. "EDD out-stationed 6 TAA staff at the NRC at our (ACWIB) insistence."

Anderson could have used this scuttlebutt a little earlier in the game.  Other NUMMI alumns have complained about the process, and the different answers they get about what educational programs TAA will accept from different "experts" at different career centers.

Why didn't Anderson go to Fremont? He says he should have, but by the time he seriously considered it, he was already in the appeals process, and figured he would wait that out.

He's a student teacher now, and on his way to a teaching credential. You could say he's been taking two courses of study over the last year: one in his new chosen field of endeavor, and one in bureaucracy.

In the episode, first broadcast in December 2008, Jeremy Clarkson takes a dubious approach to "brown rice, eco-cars" from the get-go. Then he gets excited driving a Tesla Roadster. "Wave goodbye to dial up, and say hello to broadband motoring!"  Then the car fails on him.

According to papers filed at the High Court in London, the Palo Alto firm alleges the Roadster pushed into a hangar hadn’t run out of power and didn’t need to be pushed. In other words, that the show producers faked it, and “grossly misled potential purchasers of the Roadster,” in the words of the filing. About 6 million potential purchasers - more, if you count the international audience. "Top Gear" has been the most-viewed show on BBC2 for a decade.

The BBC? “The BBC stands by the program and will be vigorously defending this claim.”

UPDATE: Top Gear responds.

Sara Backner, son Jared and Rocky Sayers, building a new life for themselves in Southern California.

Sara Backner worked at NUMMI for 13 years. Her last assignment there was Senior Group Leader in the Toyota Production System office. She was also one of 25 people who stayed on after NUMMI closed officially on April 1st, 2010 to decommission the plant, and ready it for Tesla, a much smaller operation.

"It was sad," she says. "It was very sad to see the machines being taken apart. It was like seeing someone with cancer dying slowly."

So now the Mexico City native is planning to move down from Stockton to Torrance. She'll be joining her fiance, Rocky Sayers, who's a general manager at TABC in Long Beach, Toyota's oldest manufacturing facility in North America. They make sheet metal components, steering columns, catalytic converters, coated catalytic substrates, and weld sub-assemblies.

Backner, 40, wants to be a consultant, sharing the Toyota Production System with Southern California companies. Already, she's received offers through her Linked in profile.

"I don't even have my resume out," she says. "I only have the Linked in, but that's how people have been connecting." Key words like "Lean Manufacturing" and "TPS" make all the difference, and she's planning to use her federal TAA benefits to study for another valuable certification: Six Sigma, a business management strategy developed at Motorola.

Like her fiance, Backner applied for jobs with Toyota, but the three she was offered would have required moving out of state, to Kentucky, Indiana, or Texas. "That was a very hard decision for me. I had to think about what is important right now. My family? Or my retirement?"

Backner isn't quite over the loss of NUMMI. "I drove almost two hours in the morning to go to work, then spent 10-12 hours,  depending on if we had model changes or problems, and then come back again and spend another two hours on the road." NUMMI, she says, was her "second home."

Aside from Rocky, she doesn't know anybody in the LA area. But for the second time in her life, she says, she knows "In my heart, I have to move on."

From early scouting visits, she's enthusiastic about Torrance. It's not lost on her that a lot of Japanese and Japanese-Americans live there.  For a NUMMI alumn, that's a big plus.

A NUMMI reunion at Sal's house in Union, Kentucky. (From right to left: Sal Sanchez, Brian Stout, Alex Do, Tony Banuelos, John Ortega, Matt Willis, Robert Pagan, and Jesse Contreras)

Salvador Sanchez worked at NUMMI for more than 18 years. He was a manager of a plastics shop, 45, and when the plant closed, the sole breadwinner for his family.

He grew up in Fremont, bought a house in Dublin, and moved to Union, Kentucky, to take a job with Dana Holding, a "world leader" according to the company's website, "in the supply of driveline products (axles and driveshafts), power technologies (sealing and thermal-management products), and genuine service parts."

Like many manufacturing companies, Dana thinks highly of TPS, or the Toyota Production System, and it wanted people like Sanchez to help spread the gospel. Dana operates in 26 countries. It runs 32 plants all over the US. When NUMMI closed, so did Dana's operation in Stockton, like many NUMMI suppliers in the Central Valley.

Sanchez was fortunate to have several job offers to choose from.  Dana Holding won out because his family had already spent a few years in Erlanger, Kentucky, back when he was learning TPS with Toyota. The kids were game, and so was his wife, Leslie.

She worked at NUMMI herself for seven years. Now she home schools their three kids, ages three, eight and nine. It's a bigger challenge than it used to be back in Dublin. "The home school network in California is very, very tight, and very large. In Kentucky, he says, "You're on your own."

He misses the San Francisco International Film Festival. He misses  the Nutcracker. He used to take his family to see it in San Francisco every year. Now, he drives them to Chicago.  It's a five hour drive.

"I grew up in California and I never thought I would leave it," Sanchez says. "But I like what I do. I love what I do."

It's a story you hear often from people who worked at NUMMI, up and down the line. But there's a definite split, Sanchez says, between those who worked for a salary and those who were hourly. When NUMMI was shutting down, Toyota offered jobs to the former; the latter, not so much. Sanchez says he knows some hourly people who moved near Toyota facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Mississippi, in the hopes they might land something, even on a temporary basis.  It's not a choice a lot of people can make.

But there's no question there's been an exodus of people from Northern California to the states where Toyota and its suppliers operate. when Sanchez held a NUMMI reunion party at his home last fall, 60 people showed up.

Robert and DyAnn Pagan followed Toyota to Florence, Kentucky last year.

Robert Pagan filled a number of roles at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., but by the end, he was training supervisors. After Toyota announced it was pulling out of the plant in August, he could see NUMMI was going to close. By that time, he also knew his wife DyAnn would not have her job at a local pre-school when the school year ended in June. They were both essentially cut loose.

So Pagan applied for a job with Toyota, knowing it would take him and his family out of state. Technically, NUMMI was a separate entity from Toyota, a subcontractor, but the Japanese auto maker offered to honor Pagan’s 19 years of service with the company if he stayed on for five years.

"That's the biggest thing - securing our retirement," the 49 year old says. By the end of February, he knew he had a new job in Florence, Kentucky.

"We’re about 20 miles outside of Cincinnati," Pagan says, "So we do have a city, if we need to get to one."

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Robert and DyAnn initially envisioned retiring to Boonville up in Mendocino County and working in a local winery there. The Pagans haven’t sold their home in Castro Valley. They’re renting it out, because they might still come back to retire in five years.

But Florence is growing on them - the people are friendlier, the pace of life is slower, the cost of living is lower - and the headlines coming out of California don’t look so good.

"What’s there to come back to, other than family and friends, you know?" Robert says.

"I wish I could take all my friends and family and bring them here and it would probably be a perfect world for me here," DyAnn says.

Pagan says a number of his friends used the bonus money they got from NUMMI at the end to relocate out of California, and into states where Toyota operates, like Mississippi. GM? Nope.

"General Motors kind of kicked us to the curb. And that’s kind of a sour taste, you know, from my perspective – and actually, I think a lot of the employees there at NUMMI."

DyAnn adds "I'd like to thank Toyota for giving my husband a job."

NUMMI famously proved the Toyota Production System could work in North America. Now Pagan helps spread TPS in Toyota plants throughout North America.

The Pagans' story tops the feature I filed for the California Report this morning:

We found former NUMMI workers for this story using the Public Insight Network. What's your story?  We're all eyes. Post it here.

Wearing a suit now, because that's one of the "tools" of the insurance trade.

Jason Medeiros worked at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. for about 14 years. He started on the truck frame line, installing engines and connecting brake lines.  He worked the night shift for the first three years. That was a hard physical challenge, but that wasn't the end of it.

About nine years in, he developed a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder. He was off work for about six months. Five years later, a wrist tendon "blew out on me." He was out for eight months that time.

"You work your body like a machine," Medeiros says, "and parts wear out eventually from the repetitious work." But he loved the people and he loved the pay, especially given the fact he had no college degree.

"Towards the end of NUMMI there, I was back in the pit with the trucks, torquing this and doing that. You know, your arms are just moving everywhere. The same shoulder was getting ready to pop. I was just praying, 'Please, I hope I make it to the last day, so I can collect my full severance.'"

NUMMI management offered a "retention" bonus to keep workers on the job until the very last day of operation, but injured workers on disability got only the minimum. He made it, and walked away with $47,000...before taxes ate 42% of that.

Medeiros was 44 years old. His wife worked part time in the computer lab at a local elementary school. Early retirement was not an option.

At a job fair at Ohlone College, he saw a table for Farmers Insurance, and hatched a plan. He'd never done sales before, but he liked the product as a customer, and considers himself a "people" person.

After NUMMI closed, Medeiros started classes at Quick Learning School in San Jose, studying to get a license to sell property and casualty coverage.  He figures he's making a third to a half of what he was making at NUMMI, but anticipates his client base will grow, and with it, his income. He might match his old salary in three years.

Initially though, there are lot of start up expenses. $7,000 for the used but dependable car. $1,000 for the suits. The 400 Facebook friends, at least, are free.

Something like 10 of the NUMMI friends he keeps in touch with have gone to work for Space System Loral, a commercial satellite manufacturer in Palo Alto.

"The parts that they're putting on these satellites for going out into space are really expensive," Medeiros says. "They want people doing the job right every time. So they're looking for the NUMMI people."

Does he feel tempted to join them? No, he says. He's got both feet in insurance now.

"I'm not going to need any surgeries from doing this work."

We found former NUMMI workers for this story using the Public Insight Network. What's your story?  We're all eyes. Post it here.

Mark & Gina O'Kennon retired early in Pensacola, Florida.

Mark O'Kennon was an Assistant Manager in Quality Control for the truck and car operations, overseeing as many as 180 people at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. when the plant closed last year. He was there for 25 years. He was 55 years old. He was also prepared for early retirement, financially and emotionally.

O' Kennon and his wife Gina already planned to move from Fremont to Pensacola, Florida, where she's got family.  They've been visiting for the last 20 years. The NUMMI closure simply accelerated their move east by a few years. They listed their house and sold it. On April 2nd, he left California. Gina, who had worked in human resources in the Bay Area, moved two weeks before.

"She would have supported me trying to find a new career [in Fremont]," O'Kennon says. "But at my age, the realities are, without a college education, I might go back to square one." Now he's just looking for a job, as opposed to a career, possibly something in tourism, something to bring in a little income while he eases on in to retirement.

O'Kennon keeps in touch with NUMMI friends through Facebook. Medicine is a popular choice among the job seekers in his social circle. A number have returned to school to retrain as medical technicians or nurses.  Some left the state to follow manufacturing jobs, including with Toyota. O'Kennon misses them.

"You spent 10-12 hours a day with these people, and then sometimes Saturdays." Over the course of 25 years, colleagues showed him baby pictures, and then eventually, snaps of the same kids going off to college.

The native San Franciscan also pangs for Giants games. "The year I leave, they win the World Series." The former season ticket holder had to watch the whole thing on TV.

But a year after NUMMI closed, Mark O'Kennon is at peace with LAN, or "Life After NUMMI." He prefers the slower pace of life, the lack of traffic, and the extra land that comes with a property in the Pensacola real estate market. He's taking classes at Pensacola State College now, in landscaping, to do something with that extra land.

That's O' Kennon's story.  Fellow NUMMI alumnus Maria Gregg had to find a new job locally ASAP, and she found one in Sunnyvale.  Shortly, I'll share a story about another colleague who left the state to land his next job.

We found former NUMMI workers for this story using the Public Insight Network. What's your story?  We're all eyes. Post it here.

(Credit: KQED/Myrow)

With unemployment in California resolutely stuck around 12.4%, I offer this tidbit from Craig Palmquist, manager of the NUMMI Reemployment Center in Fremont.  He's managed a number of similar centers around the country.

Palmquist says a lot of people go into the search for a new job still stuck in the mindset of their old job.

"You give me any job title you have, and I can help you define 200 or 300 different skills you have right now, and jobs you can apply to."

For instance, Palmquist worked a "huge" layoff with miners back in Arizona. One skeptical guy challenged him in disbelief. "I mixed reagents." Palmquist had no idea what that meant, but he pressed the guy for details. "OK, walk me through a day."

• Read gauges and dials
• Adjusted chemical levels
• Moved drums and sacks of chemicals with a forklift
• Maintained inventory of chemicals

You get the idea. So this guy can be a bartender, Palmquist says, or work in a photo lab, or a hospital lab, or for a utility company.

"Forklift operator, inventory control," says Palmquist. "Don't write on an application to a new company that you mixed reagents. They're going to look at that and ask 'What the hell is that?' Every resume, every application, for every job, has to be specifically tailored, written in the vernacular of the new employer."

If you're job hunting, post your stories about resumes that got you in the door for an interview...and why.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa poses for the cameras on a Balqon truck (Credit: Balqon)

This might have snuck past you over the weekend. Harbor City-based Balqon has signed a $16 million deal to build 300 drive systems for inner-city buses in China.

Balqon began building electric drayage trucks for Southern California ports in early 2009 - with $500,000 in seed money from the Port of Los Angeles and the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Now the company plans to hire 150 new workers to meet expanding demand from China.

The deal between Balqon and Winston Global Energy, a Chinese lithium-ion battery maker, creates a partnership to build electric buses, trucks, marine vessels and motorhomes. Yes, motorhomes. The first one, a 45-foot prototype, was completed in September.

But first, Balqon plans to build 1,000 zero-emission buses for use in China.

Balwinder Samra, Balqon's President and CEO, tells the Long Beach Press Telegram: "Places like China and India in particular are really pushing research and development into battery and electric technology because they see the drain that oil (price) fluctuations can have on an economy, and they don't want to have oil prices being a drag on their economies like they've seen in America and Europe. It's smart planning. You can't run an economy where a single commodity can swing you from growth to recession."

(Credit: Reed's, Inc.)

Honest, I'm not being paid for this plug.  I love Reed's ginger brew. So I felt compelled to click on the LA Business Journal's story on how the the beverage company got its fizz back after nearly going out of business in 2009.