Where are these workers now? Still stressed
3 area people struggle to make a living, build businesses
By Alejandra Cancino, Tribune reporter
March 12, 2011
During the past year the Chicago Tribune has featured a number of stories about people either looking for work or barely hanging on being self-employed. We checked in with three of them to see where they stood.
Nearly three years after losing his job, Mark Lyons has stopped sending out resumes, following up on job leads and calling companies to pitch himself. Instead, Lyons, 47, has decided to focus on growing his gardening consulting business, Green Thumb at Your Service.
“It's now official: I am an entrepreneur,” said Lyons, of Palatine.
Lyons hopes to tap on into the “eating local” trend and teach people how to grow food in their gardens.
Before he was laid off in April 2008, Lyons was a midlevel manager, doing market research for food companies. When he lost his job, he signed up with 17 temp agencies to earn money as he looked for a full-time job. As the weeks rolled by, he accepted more jobs from temp agencies, which would hire him at a fraction of what he felt he was worth.
His current temp job, for example, pays him $15 per hour, or about $31,200 a year, roughly $57,000 less than what he earned before losing his job.
Four months ago, when the newspaper wrote about him, Lyons was keeping his head up and trying to keep positive. But he acknowledged that the rejection he felt in getting passed over after job interviews was getting increasingly difficult.
At the same time, he said he enjoyed teaching vegetable gardening classes at a few colleges and decided he could build his life around his passion for gardening.
“(I feel) empowered, free and a bit concerned,” he said, adding that he realizes being an entrepreneur is as risky as working for a corporation.
“There is no security in a corporate job,” Lyons said.
Then there's Roberto Hernandez, 51, who started his own business, an auto repair shop in Albany Park, and said he's on the brink of closing it.
“It worries me, of course. How could it not? Just imagine,” Hernandez said. Some days he is hopeful, other days he's not.
Finally there is Eva Lopez, of Albany Park. She is holding on, but her hopes are fading. She is working about 24 hours a week cleaning houses, down significantly from before the recession. She has cleaned houses for more than 20 years. Initially, she worked to supplement her husband's income and save a little bit every month to buy a house.
In 2003, she accomplished her goal, buying a two-flat. She put down $103,000 on the $409,000 house and took out a variable-rate mortgage.
The payments eventually rose to $2,680 from $2,200 a month. To make up the difference she cleaned houses six days a week, which translated to about $975 a week. By then, she had become her family's main provider. Her husband, who is diabetic and on disability, earns a small income selling candy and peanuts as a street vendor during the warmer months.
Soon after her payments increased, Lopez lost two clients. Eventually she stopped making mortgage payments. When she was interviewed a year ago, she was trying to refinance.
Today, Lopez, 53, is still trying to refinance, and her income has decreased by $195, to $430 a week.
“We are really tight (with money). We buy just what's essential,” Lopez said.
A few weeks ago, desperate for additional customers, she paid $400 to a person who promised she would help her find clients. The deal didn't work, and Lopez said she couldn't get her money back. “When there aren't any jobs, people take advantage (of you),” she said.
Of her situation, Lopez said, “I've resigned myself. I'm worried, but there is nothing I can do.”
<mcancino at-sign tribune dot com>
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