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commission hearing, after which the suspension was revoked.
  In March of this year, after 15 years of working for ISD—and bobbing and weaving against the department—Joe retired. Despite his department’s cheap shots, Joe was never KO’d. "Throw this in," he recently told me. "I took a nice vacation to the Grand Canyon with my son during the suspension." Le deseamos much exito en el futuro...
  Some county managers have refined the sucker punch to an art form. Where’d they learn it? When I walk into the management’s offices on behalf of members, I quickly glance through the bookshelves looking for the book "101 Sucker Punches" by Kurt Craven. It sounds like a county management-training manual.
  A long-term employee like Joe might do what’s reasonably expected of him and might think that his many years with the county might have earned him some respect. Don’t drop your guard.
  A sucker punch case in point involves another member, Hilda Guillen. Hilda has worked in the Department of Community and Senior Services for 30 years. She started working for the county in the sixties and worked her way up from a typist clerk to the Director of the One-Stop Career Center in East Los Angeles. Until recently.
  In July of 1998, Hilda was unceremoniously given the hook after running the One-Stop Center for 5 years.
  It wasn’t because of her performance as a director. Since 1985, Hilda has been rated "Very Good" on her performance evaluations, including a rating of "Outstanding" as the director of One-Stop.

As director, she supervised about 25 employees from five agencies. Her job for One-Stop involved supervising case managers who would place people into job training sites that then would train the participants. Job developers, whom Hilda also supervised, would then place them in jobs. Job developers had to make sure the sites could deliver on placing the participants. In her overall supervisory role, Hilda was 100% successful in meeting the goals set for One-Stop in 1998. In fact, she exceeded the goal, which was to place 90 individuals in jobs. She placed about 160. These were people who the Employment Development Department (also known as the unemployment line), the Department of Social Services (also known as the welfare line) and local schools had referred to One-Stop. They were people who were willing and able if not quite ready to work. Hilda and her staff helped them get ready through the career center. Hilda estimates that she placed at least 400 people in jobs over her tenure at One-Stop.
  She was also instrumental in obtaining a $5,000 grant known as "The Spotlight Award" from Bank of America for One-Stop.
  When the department removed Hilda from One-Stop in July 1998, Jackie Sakane, a project supervisor, told her that she was "mistreating" her staff and that she wasn’t getting along with certain individuals. Hilda was shocked to hear this. Sakane asked, "Didn’t you know?" Hilda asked Sakane about anonymous letters complaining about her that Hilda had heard about. "How did you know about the letters?" Sakane asked. In response for her demand for copies, Sakane assured her she’d get them.		 It turned out that someone made an anonymous hotline call that Hilda was improperly receiving donations, gifts and gratuities from various organizations.
  In September of 1998, she was compelled to answer questions put to her by Jack Skadsem and Guy Zelinski with the Special Investigations Unit in the Office of the Auditor Controller. After six months, their report is still not complete yet.
  The donations were in the form of clothing and clothing racks for the participants at One-Stop. "There was also a basket of goodies a vendor sent to the staff around Christmas. And one vendor sent a bag of avocados that he’d picked from his tree. One vendor donated cleaning products for the GAIN participants training to do janitorial services. There was also $5 some staff contributed monthly for a coffee club that one of my staff handled," Hilda says. "And they got not only coffee but bagels and fruit—more than than their money’s worth," she says. But why the brouhaha?
  Hilda protested her transfer by filing a complaint with the Department of Human Resources. David Evans of DHR responded: "While these reasons [that she mistreated her staff and did not get along with others] may be inconsistent with Ms. Guillen’s past ‘Very good’ or ‘Outstanding’ performance evaluations, it does not mean the reasons given are untrue." It’s the kind of response you’d expect from a six-year old. Evans must not be the sharpest tool in the shed over there. I bet if he threw himself on the ground he’d miss.
  Although she received a mere "Competent" in her last PE, it was changed to "Very Good" after she appealed it.

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