Desire, months of searching haven’t landed woman a job

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Out of work this spring, 51-year-old Paula Gray decided to stand on a highway off-ramp and hand out business cards to passing drivers.

But the former administrative assistant remained unemployed at the end of each day, even after an April 11 Las Vegas Sun story highlighted her efforts.

Her search then began folding back onto her past. The newspaper story circulated through cyberspace, bringing forth a cousin, an aunt and Gray’s brother, who “was furious” when he found out about her situation. “He said, ‘If you are in dire straits, you should have told me,’ ” Gray recalled.

On a whim, or perhaps at wit’s end, she also e-mailed a college friend, 30 years after they had last seen each other in Wisconsin. To her surprise, the woman soon answered, and consoled and supported, as if the two were still cramming for finals.

Gray broke down recently as she described these and other shows of support, including checks for amounts ranging from $50 to $1,000 arriving in the mail, and strangers promising to pray for her success.

Unfortunately, as the gritty, gabby redhead noted after concluding a 2 1/2-hour phone call to the state unemployment benefits office last week, none of that has resulted in a job.

Despite her 15 minutes of fame in the newspaper, her experience has been similar to that of many among the 147,000 out-of-work Nevadans.

She interviews, gets the don’t-call-us routine, considers jobs she would never have given a second thought to in the past, stumbles through the state unemployment benefits system, gets up each day and does it again. And like many of the people who make up the county’s 10.4 percent unemployment rate, she is doing it all for the first time. Gray was recruited for her last two jobs and hasn’t been unemployed for this long since high school.

Also, like many, she was drawn to the valley by a job. Her family and friends are elsewhere. So now she faces her 12th month of unemployment with little support at hand. The long-distance contacts renewed through this spring’s publicity are her main source of succor.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” Gray said at the end of another day, exhaling. “I’m really trying to put out good vibes. But it’s not easy.”

She had just finished summing up the last two months of her search.

Companies with sales jobs have called: Amway, Mary Kay, Avon. “But I want a real job!”

People call to tell her she is in their prayers. Someone in recruitment at the Venetian saw her story in the Sun, called to say he was impressed with her tenacity. But interviews afterward went nowhere. She took tests with the state Personnel Department, passed, and is eligible for administrative assistant jobs. But there are none. She says she was one of 10 chosen for an interview among 165 applicants at MGM Mirage. The company sent her an e-mail afterward complimenting her “true dedication to ... employment desires” before dropping the bad news: “At this time I have selected another candidate to fill this position.”

She also discovered that she had been sending paperwork to the wrong office to extend her unemployment benefits beyond the first 26 weeks. The next 20 weeks are handled by the federal government, not the state. “The Web site is very confusing,” Gray said. And, she has fallen two months behind in her health insurance payments.

Gray recently considered hitting the street again with the hundreds of business cards she has left. But the desert heat keeps her indoors, following up on leads online, in the newspaper, from her first stint outdoors.

Gray said it has been hard to explain to her family in Baltimore why finding a job has been so difficult.

“I told them, ‘You just don’t understand,’ ” she said. “You really have to do something to stand out in Las Vegas — and even then nothing happens.”