Guard down

Help wanted

To inquire about a crossing guard job, call Helen Lawhon at 229-3446.

With the start of the new school year just 12 days away, Metro Police say they need more than 60 crossing guards in Las Vegas -- the worst shortage in recent memory.

"We had to replace 19 crossing guards and hire an additional 52 for new crossing sites," said Helen Lawhon, supervisor of crossing guards for Metro, the agency that employs citizens to perform the $7.74-an-hour job. "We've hired about 14 people for these jobs, but since then we have had to replace others who quit."

Metro has 189 crossing guards hired. It needs 250.

"This is the worst shortage I have seen in my six years on this job," Lawhon said. "This year the Clark County School District will have 18,000 more children attending schools for the first time, and many of them will be walking."

The 52 new guards are needed to cover crosswalks at four new elementary schools, school district spokeswoman Mary Stanley-Larsen said. While that increases the need for crossing guards, that relieves another problem for the school district: Those students no longer need to be bused to school because they now live within walking distance of a school.

"There is a two-mile limit for students assigned to a particular school," she said. "Busing is provided only for students who live outside that limit. Naturally, we try to make the zoning so that children go to the school closest to their neighborhoods."

Lawhon said her office has blanketed mobile home parks and senior clubs with notices for these jobs. Seniors are being targeted for the positions because retirees have free time. And some of them could use the extra income that is small enough so it does not affect their Social Security.

Crossing guards are required to work 8:30-9:05 a.m. and 3:15-3:45 p.m. -- a total of one hour per weekday. They are paid for two full hours per day. Rookie guards get $154.80 every two weeks, and guards get a 2 percent raise per year.

Crossing guards are employed only at elementary schools. They must be at least 18 and have their own transportation to get to and from the job sites. They are required to wear a police-issued red vest, red hat and ID badge. They carry a small stop sign and a police-issued cellular phone that is used only for emergencies.

Although the job carries great responsibility, it has not been a dangerous job. In the last several years there have been few accidents at locations where crossing guards were on duty, and in each instance crossing guards were not hit by vehicles, officials said.

"We are trying to get across the message that this is not a dangerous job because a number of people have told us they are afraid of getting hit by motorists," said Gerdie Owens, district supervisor for the crossing guards and a grandmother who started as a crossing guard in 1994.

"Still the main thing we teach new recruits is that you stand between that traffic and the children every time they cross.

"And we want people who will commit to showing up because a lot of children are petrified to cross some of these streets by themselves. If the guard doesn't show up the children will stand there a long time or go back to the school," Owens said.

In Owens' district, crossing guards range in age from as young as 32 to one man in his early 90s. And she notes that crossing guards have to be somewhat fit.

"I've worn my odometer, and on a busy day I've walked 1 1/2 miles during a half hour of work," said 72-year-old Rocco Ranelle, who has worked the corner of Mariner Cove Drive and Fort Apache Road near M.J. Christensen Elementary for three years.

"Each year I get to know all of the kids, and I don't leave until I know all of them have crossed."

Terry Peters, 47, a crossing guard since last May, said she does the job because of a sense of community involvement -- not for the money.

"I just love kids, and this is my way of helping out," she said.

Crossing guard trainee Diane Byrd, a security guard at the Bellagio, said that her children, who are now in their 20s, always had school crossing guards.

"I just want to make sure that kids today have the same protection," she said.

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