PRECISION'S UNIQUE IDENTITY WRISTBAND INDUSTRY EMERGED OUT OF GLENDALE GARAGE.

Byline: BRENT HOPKINS Staff Writer

SAN FERNANDO - With five hundred bucks, a borrowed garage and some tools from a local high school, 22-year-old Walter Mosher Jr. would build himself a future. He just didn't know it yet. At that time, a half-century ago, he was just a Burbank kid studying engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He didn't have a lot of money, but he had a buddy who worked in the hospital business. His pal had seen the future and thought the key to success would come in an innocuous thing: wristbands.

With two more friends, they pooled their money, got together $2,000 and founded Precision Dynamics Corp., the enterprise that today calls Mosher its chairman and chief technology.

"I was just getting an education," he recalled. "I never knew this would be a business I could work for when I was done."

It took him many more years to get there, as he stayed on for his master's and doctorate in engineering. But the business took off in a hurry, outgrowing the Glendale garage and Burbank High School machine shop where Mosher and his partners began.

"We knew we needed credit, because we didn't have any money," he said. "We looked at General Dynamics and Precision Scientific and stole half of each name. It worked like a charm - no one asked for references."

Before they pushed into the health care business, making patient identification bands for hospitals, there hadn't been much of a wristband industry. Doctors affixed notes to their patients or simply wrote them on bare skin. Babies wore strings with beads to tell them apart, leading to inevitable mix-ups.

The partners thought they could do better, turning out a one-piece band that required no tools to attach. Soon they had two varieties, then four, then seven, on to today, when the company manufactures thousands of different varieties.

Monochrome or metallic, electronic or old-fashioned, Precision's assorted wares now show up in hospitals, concert venues, resorts and prisons. After years spreading out across Burbank, they consolidated to a manufacturing plant in San Fernando and a warehouse in Pacoima.

The company cleared $60 million in sales last year and employs 500 workers worldwide. Mosher, now 71, became a prominent member of the San Fernando Valley business community, serving on numerous boards and working with a host of charities.

"They are a tremendous business that's both socially and civically responsible to its employees," Maribel de la Torre, a San Fernando city councilwoman. "Every time that we as a city, or any nonprofit needs something, they're there. It's the most involved business in San Fernando."

Mosher says he plans on keeping it that way as long as he can, but he acknowledges the challenges of being a large employer in a competitive market. In order to keep costs down, Precision has heavily automated its factory floor and Mosher said that machines would take the place of some lower-paid workers in the coming year.

But even as the company feels the strain of international competition, it remains an anchor of the local business community.

"They're one of the mainstays," said Jose Pulido, San Fernando's city administrator. "They've been here through thick and thin, really stuck it out. No matter what changes our city has gone through, they've remained a beacon that people could look to."

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Walter Mosher Jr. of Precision Dynamics Corp. in San Fernando holds some of the company's wristbands.

(2 -- color) A driver's license is swiped into an identification system developed by Precision Dynamics Corp. in San Fernando.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News