The hardest jobs in Los Angeles: young stockbroker's lot is tough, so is a 'trimmer's.'

The hardest jobs in Los Angeles

Young stockbroker's lot is tough, so is a `trimmer's'

What are the hardest jobs in Los Angeles?

Some Angelenos work such long hours that they have no social life, while others tackle the disagreeable, such as dealing with human waste. Some do grinding work, such as sewing clothes for low wages with no benefits, while others have to pick up dead dogs and cats. Some work with AIDS patients.

A few defuse bombs.

"At our job, officer safety is the first priority," says Herb Williams, seven-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department's eight-person bomb squad. "It has to be. We are the busiest bomb squad in the country: So far this year, we have been called out 460 times, and we expect we will handle 700 calls this year."

Besides the real risks -- two members of the bomb squad, including the founder, died in a 1986 detonation -- there is the discomfort of the full-on bomb suit.

"We wear full-length fire retardant suits, and over that, Kevlar-construction full-body suits. We wear heavy, steel-toed boots, flak jacket, and a steel helmet," says Williams. "It is very hot in the suits."

And while working in the hot suit, in the summer heat, it is devilishly unreliable World War I and II military explosives, and amateur pipe bombs that present the worst hazards, says Williams.

"If something is well-made, we know how to defuse it," he says. "We have some of the world's foremost technicians on the squad. But something unreliable is another matter." A homemade pipe bomb this year exploded on two LAPD defusers, injuring both and ending the career of one.

While precautions are taken, there are always imponderables: Someone left what Williams described as the "largest car-bomb in history" outside the Internal Revenue Service's West Los Angeles office this February.

The bomb would have leveled a city block, if detonated, according to news reports. For this, bomb squaders make $43,000 a year and up.

The tensions of a bomb-squader are bearable, says Williams, 45, but not always so for spouses. "I am going to retire in two-and-a-half years," says Williams. "My wife will be very happy."

At least Williams has a mate. Some in Los Angeles work such long hours they believe that marital bliss, or even companionship, will have to wait.

"My social life is a wreck," admits Frank Maselli, 34, single, and assistant branch manager for stock brokerage house PaineWebber in downtown Los Angeles. "I get up at a quarter to four a.m. I go to work so early that I can walk up the middle of Figuroa Street," he says, describing a downtown thoroughfare usually jammed with honking traffic.

PaineWebber, like all West Coast brokerages, starts at East Coast hours. The New York Stock Exchange opens at 6:30 a.m. PST, and briefings start earlier. At 5:05 a.m. PaineWebber New York begins barking out advice to their national brokerage network, including Los Angeles. Maselli has to be there.

But the Pacific Stock Exchange closes at 4 p.m. Duties keep Masselli on the job until 7 p.m. or later. By 9 p.m. his empty bed calls. Maselli also works on Sundays, in an un-air-conditioned office, "because there is no one around, and I can get work done."

Two years new to Los Angeles, the ex-Army officer Maselli says, "I am not married, and it's a good question of how I am ever going to get married."

Maselli, however, says he loves his work, gets paid six figures, and is learning much from the PaineWebber branch manager. He adds, "Oh, if you like what you are doing, it is not work. It is not like cleaning out toilets all day long."

But the toilet business has improved, claims Barry Gump, scion of the Canyon Country-based portable toilet empire. "It's true, the majority of people would prefer not to handle others' waste," allows Gump. "But the new toilets are of plastic construction, and we use vacuum pumps and high-powered water hoses. We don't actually have to handle the stuff, except maybe in cases of vandalism."

One employee who does have to handle stuff is Edward E. Brown III, 44, dead animal pick-up officer for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation.

"You want to see it? This is what goes on out there," says Brown, sliding open a hatch-door on the back of his city truck. Inside the door is a pile of perhaps 20 animal corpses, and Brown tosses another dead dog in. The smell is overpowering. Brown picks up an average of "six or seven dogs a day and eight cats."

Brown says his job is tough. "This is a job that no one else wants to do. Some of the animals are fairly decayed, several weeks after dying." The worst smelling animals are dead seals, due to their oily fat, which turns rancid in the sun, says Brown.

Brown's worst job ever involved picking up two dead dogs, the victims of their master, who had committed suicide. "The bodies were next to each other," he recalls, referring to the dead owner and the black Labrador retrievers. Brown is paid $15 an hour.

Some work with the dead; others work with those who may be dying, such as Dr. Tom Horowitz, general practioner at St. Vincent's Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles, who specializes in the treatment of patients who have tested positive for the AIDS virus.

For Horowitz, 39, a tough part of the job is the constant "red alert" status of every patient. "When a patient has a symptom, it is always an emergency," says Horowitz. "A simple headache could be toxoplasmosis or meningitis. Every ache has a red-flag attached to it."

Too, helping to inform loved ones of a patient's diagnosis is a frequent challenge. "Just last weekend I had a patient who had never told his parents he was gay. I sat with him, and in a three-hour session we told his parents of the diagnosis and what it meant."

Still, the hardest part of his job is that so many of his patients die, says Horowitz. "With each patient, we are hoping to buy enough time that a cure will be found while the patient is still alive."

But for thousands of Angelenos, the toughest part of a job is not psychological stress, but simple financial survival. Many, such as Marilu Camarana, 26, a sometime "trimmer" in the city's garment district, have worked for minimum wages, or less, and no medical benefits.

"I have worked for as little as four cents a piece," says Camarana. "At the end of a week, you get a check for $50 to $60."

Camarana keeps her head above water, in part because she lives rent-free in the flat of a friend. Other trimmers do not want to break for even a few moments to discuss their work. "Each four cents is vital," explains Camarana. To stop working would mean a loss of four to 12 cents.

The work is tiring, says Camarana. "You are on your feet all day, and your arms get tired from cutting all day.

The pay is so low, it seems almost any other work would be preferable. But many of the trimmers are illegal aliens, and speak poor English at best. The only other jobs they know how to do are offered by other sewing contractors, who offer about the same pay.

PHOTO : Life jacket: Herb Williams puts on 65 pounds of armor

PHOTO : Fighting for life: AIDS doctor Tom Horowitz examines patient Ron Eastman

PHOTO : Workaholic stockbroker: Frank Maselli, assistant branch manager at the Los Angeles office

PHOTO : of PaineWebber, presides over meeting