JC Arens stands near a Cessna 182, the aircraft he has flown for years in search-and-rescue missions as a member of the Civil Air Patrol, the civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. The Vietnam veteran, a Realtor and avid volunteer, says he’s a “jack of all trades, master of none.”
Thursday, April 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.
JC Arens had three professional goals as a child. Fly a plane? Yup, since he was a teenager. Work in law enforcement? Check, as a $1-a-year part-time volunteer deputy for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department. Be a doctor? No. (Well, not yet.)
The 59-year-old also has sold gas and gas detectors, as well as other instruments, to oil and gas companies, is a real estate agent who teaches his colleagues, designed and built radio transmitters and relay-logic panels, served in Vietnam as a door-gunner and crew chief in a Huey helicopter, and helps direct search-and-rescue missions. Oh, and he volunteers 10 to 20 hours a week.
“I’m a jack of all trades, master of none,” he says proudly.
For years he has flown a Cessna 182 as a volunteer with the Civil Air Patrol, the civilian auxiliary of the Air Force, frequently for missing persons or downed aircraft.
These days when the air patrol searches for missing pilots, he more likely works at a mission base, such as at North Las Vegas Airport, investigating the pilot’s flying habits and other clues to help track him down.
(When adventurer Steve Fossett was reported missing Sept. 3, 2007, Arens worked for a week out of Minden Airport in Reno, helping coordinate from the ground what turned out to be a futile search.)
Arens can’t recall his last lazy day. The notion of retirement doesn’t exist in his vocabulary.
“I look at it this way: The day that I retire is the day they close the cover,” he says. “I can’t sit still.”
Arens’ main job, his source of income, is in real estate. Arens could be at his realty office writing a course on housing law for agents seeking to renew their licenses. Or teaching it. Or showing homes. (The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors has recognized him as its Realtor of the month for, he explains, his volunteer work with the organization and Habitat for Humanity.)
The Illinois native who relocated to Las Vegas from Los Angeles in 1998 says the smorgasbord of jobs and hobbies has a theme: a desire to help people. The theme branches from his more than four decades in the Civil Air Patrol.
Of Civil Air Patrol members, he says: “We like to help our community. We like to fly and be around airplanes. And the Air Force pays for our flying.”
As for one day becoming a doctor? Probably not, he says, “but you never know what life has in store for you.”
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