A couple weeks ago, we told you the story of high school juniors who were getting seventy thousand dollars a year job offers because, among other things, they didn't want to go to college and get a degree in left handed medieval puppetry. They wanted to do something where their skills would be used immediately, and for many of these cases in mechanical ways, working with their hands and getting
paid right away. And one of the places that allows you to do that is the Heavy Metal Summer Experience sheet metal piping, electrical plumbing trades at the Heavy Metal Summer Experience. Angie Simon is executive director and co founder of Heavy Metal Summer Experience, and she joins us now. First, Angie, thanks for taking time for us today.
Garry, I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you very much.
Hey, I'm the father of a son who did not want to go to college. He wanted to work with his hands, and he's been doing that. I'm i'm I love the idea, I love the the creativity. I guess even though that seems like we kind of fell away from the old trades when it comes to getting jobs.
Where where did this come from?
Where?
Did Heavy Metal Summer Experience come from?
Well, Gary, I was the president and CEO of a mechanical contracting firm up here in in northern California. I'm in the San Francisco Bay area, and you know, I think, I think I realized we were a union contractor. We had sheet melon pipe fitters, and I realized that so many of the kids in the neighborhoods they all expect to go to college, but many of the kids weren't excited about it. They didn't want to go to college.
So I decided we were in a we were neighbors with an underserved area, East Palo Alto, and we decided that we would run a summer camp in our shop to teach the East Palao walto high schoolers about the trades because a lot of them weren't going to go to college. And it was I did that. I decided to do this, and my friend up in Seattle, Recurrementson,
decided to do it with me. The two of us kind of formed what we decided to name Heavy Metal Summer Experience, and it was basically a summer camp to teach high schoolers about the mechanical, lexical and plumbing trades, and the first summer it was just an amazing experience. These kids and their parents were so appreciative. Many of these kids didn't even know how to use a tape measure, and now all of a sudden, a bunch of them have been in our trades. This was back in twenty twenty one.
I've railed about this for a long time since somebody paid me to sit in front of a microphone. And that is that we complain, not we You and I don't complain about this. People who are younger than us complaining they don't have the money to buy a house, but they're also not doing the math or the realization of well, you went to four year college, you got a degree in philosophy or whatever you got, and you did it all on student loans.
You're never going to be able to afford a house at that point.
But if you work in the trades, you work with your hands, even while you get your philosophy degree, you're going to be paid for actual work.
Is do you see that as well? Am I am? I crazy?
No, not at all? You know, I tell the story so I'm retired now, I'm in my sixties. But when I started at Western Allied and I was there thirty five years. I had gone to college for five years,
which is kind of the typical. I enjoyed that last year and I worked for one other company for a year, so I'd been out of college, I mean out of high school for six years when I started at Western Allied and there was a pipefitter that was my age, I think by maybe a year older, and he had just bought his first house in the Bay Area and I just barely got out of college and was paying my parents back. I didn't have any student loans because
my parents were able to help me. But the fact that he was able to buy a house in the Bay Area because he started at eighteen years old and been working for six years, and he had part of that time he lived at home with his folks, and he saved enough money to buy a house. So absolutely,
that's I mean, we all get a late start. I mean, the average age of people going into the apprenticeships right now is twenty seven years old, so they're obviously doing other things for the first ten years before when they get out of high school. And that's my thought was, let's encourage some of these high school kids to join the unions and the trades right out of high school and amazing, by the time they're twenty five years old, they're going to be a journey person and making six figures.
Yeah, that's I just don't think people understand that the amount of money that you can make immediately, whether it's a welding like an AA degree in welding from a community college somewhere, which here in California is basically free, you're going to be able to get out there and have a steady job with good benefits. Often is there a specific area or a specific trade that you think is the most in need of bodies right now?
Well, I do think the three we focus on that we call them the skilled trades and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. I will say that I think going forward all three need people desperately. But electrically, I think electricians are going to be where the real shortage is because of all the electrification as well as a solar the energy across the nation level ship factory is being built. I really do think we're going to be really short of electricians.
But right now in construction we are short four hundred thousand jobs. Now I mean people. We don't have enough people to fill four hundred thousand jobs and forty percent of our industries retiring in the next five to seven years. So you know, if you're interested in getting a good job that pays well, get into the trades because boy, there is so much opportunity in the next ten years.
What's your favorite trade? What do you like to tinker with?
Well, I guess I would say that probably I worked for a sheet metal and piping contractor, and I guess I have a little favorite towards sheet metal, just because I think the stainless and the welding and it's kind of fun. I like seat metal, but that's I think piping is good too, but I don't. I'm a little more afraid of electrical.
So yeah, that'll give you a good buzz.
If if you're not careful, it'll it'll let you know when you do something wrong.
All right, can you think matter?
Well?
Andy? Can you hang on further segment?
I want to talk specifically about what goes on during the camps, where they are and how people can.
Sign up for those I'd love to all right.
Angie Simon is executive director and co founder of Heavy Metal Summer Experience. If you're interested, if your kids are interested, if you want your kid to be interested, you can go to HMS dot org Heavy Metal Summer Experience HMSE dot org. A great location map as on there, including a bunch here in the West, the City of Industry Commerce down in San Diego, you got Ventura. All of these places are going to be having summer camps with
Heavy Metal Summer Experience. We'll come back with Angie here in just a moment. We've been talking with Angie Simon. She's the executive director and co founder of Heavy Metal Summer Experience to help expose young kids to the trades. We need more people in the trades, sheet metal, piping, plumbing, trades.
You can explore all of them.
You become part of a team that's going to build community in all of this. Each of the camps that they run is unique, and there are several of them, not just here in California, but throughout the country if you're listening in other parts of the world. Angie, the Heavy Metal Summer Experience, what is it? What does it entail for say, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old kid?
Well, Gary, every camp is free to the kids, so they go in and they don't pay anything for this camp. Typically they're going to be thirty to forty hours of camp, So they are different schedules depending on the location. Some of them will do it in one week, some of them will do it in two weeks in the afternoons, because they're often run in contractors shops or in union training center, So it depends on the shop. For example, if it's a contractor's shop, it might have to be
in the afternoons. So they're going to run it for two weeks in the afternoons. But the day one they show up, they get a set of red wing boots that we have a Metal Summer Experience paid for, and they get their own set of work boots because that makes you feel like you're really in working in the shop. And then for throughout that forty hours, they're going to be doing sheet metal piping, it's gonna be welding, they're
going to be so making projects. Make a toolbox that they can take home, They make a lamp out of piping that they can take home, They learn how to wire the lamp. They just do a whole bunch of projects. We talked a lot about safety. We talk a lot about well, we also talk a lot about technology because I think people don't realize how much technology is used in construction nowadays. Robotics and AI, all of that's being used in construction, so it doesn't mean we're just digging
ditches and construction anymore. And then when they're done getting toward the end of that, they get a graduation metal, the stainless seal metal, and they get a bag of hand tools from either Milwaukee or Duwalt, which are partners of ours for heavy Metal Summer Experience. We have some amazing partners. So it's a great week of them learning a little bit about what it means to be in the trades, and you know, they you can just see how much they really enjoy working with their hands.
Is this.
Is this a replacement for the lack of shop classes that we've seen in high schools taken away?
I feel very strongly it is. I mean, I feel like, I mean, I'm sure my age, but there was still shop classes when I was in high school. But I feel that if we had more of these shop classes and vogue tech type classes in our high schools, we wouldn't have to do this because they would learn about that. So I kind of there's some states that are much better than California in regards to that that have better shops in their high schools. But really it's just a way.
I think we also need to change of perception about cut construction that people we need to understand that's not like a secondary backstep job. I mean, this is a really great career. You get benefits. You've get health care and pensions, and I mean you can retire at fifty five if you start at eighteen, and you're going to have full benefits at that point. So I do think that if we could get this back into our high schools,
then maybe we wouldn't need these summer camps anymore. But listen, I started in twenty twenty one with two camps and twenty eight kids, and this summer we have fifty one camps across the United States and Canada, and I have almost nine hundred kids in the camp. Wow, it's just gone crazy.
And for the kids, or for maybe adults that are listening that have kids that are in this world and you know they're mechanically inclined, or they're not cut out for college, or however you want to put it. This can easily lead to a job just from the instructors that are involved with the camps, right.
I mean, they'll hire some of these kids right away.
The instructors or the contractors that are running the camps, and they in the camps, they meet the union folks, they meet how they learn how to apply for the apprenticeship. They learn what it takes. And many times the contractors, if they're hosting a camp, will hire the graduates on the spot and say come work as a pre apprentice, you know, make sure you can show up on time for six months and everything else, and then they get
them in the apprenticeship. So we have in La in the La La area, we have three camps this summer, and well actually four depending on what you call the La area. But we have one in Commerce, we have one in the City of Industry. We have one in San Diego, and one in Ventura next those are all most of our camps are pretty well full this summer. It's kind of late at this point, but next summer I think we will also add Pomona. We may also add Vista and Fresno potentially, so in the California area.
But again they're all over the United States, and we even have some in Canada, and they can check our website out. If you google heavy Metal Summer Experience you'll find us.
And you're also looking for hosts as well, not just in participants, but you're looking for people and companies that will host these camps.
True, true, And like, for example, I just talked to somebody in Vista. They have actually have a high school in Vista that does do welding, which I thought was very exciting. They'd like to do a summer camp there. And Visa is I think. I think it's northeast of San Diego. So we're going to work on trying to see if we can make that work for the folks and have them be a host next summer. But we are looking for host contractors or training centers to help
us with that. We don't provide actually run the camp. We support them with all the resources to run the camp, and we kind of handhold them the first summer. And I'll tell you the thing is, we get pretty much one hundred percent return from the host. So if I had fifty one camps this summer, I'll start with fifty one next summer, and then I'll probably add another twenty or thirty, so we're busy.
Well, that's great, and listen, this is an exciting thing because I'm a huge proponent of this kind of work. I'm a huge proponent of this kind of availability of this work for kids because we've turned away from it for so long that we're starting to see the effects
of that. Where you know, people don't know how to if people don't even know how to fix stuff around their own house, and you'd be willing to you know, you're going to pay several hundred bucks and if you're on the receiving end of that's several hundred bucks.
Good for you. And this is a good way to do it.
Angie. God, it's not that hard to change out your garbage disposal. I mean, if you know how, if you've learned a little bit of things, but instead of having to hire somebody to do it. So I do think it's time for us to slowly think change a little bit. I'm a mechanical engineer. I went to college here in California, but I still think it's so important that so many kids this is what you need them to do. And if you know, look at our website if you want to help this. We also would be happy to accept
any donations anybody give us. So, Mary, thank you for having me on.
I really appreciate what One personal question is, where'd you go to college?
Yes, I went to and San Luis Obisto. Oh yeah, my.
Father graduated from cal Poly. My daughter just graduated last summer from from cal Poly.
So that's my and my son graduated from cal Poly. So that's good. We got the connection. So that's and there's a there's a college just hands on, hands on that we learned by doing. So they really do stress it. I put the welding class at cal polic.
That's literally their their slogan is learned by doing.
Yeah it is. And I was terrible at welding. I learned that really quick.
Well, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you, Angie, and we wish you the best of luck with Heavy Metal Summer Experience again, if you want information about it, go to h m s E dot org v Metal Summer Experience h M s E dot org with all the information about the current camps that are going on this summer, about future camps that are there, uh and encourage your kids to get involved.
Angie.
Thank you Jerry, thank you so much for having me on. I love you. Help them and get the word out.
Absolutely, we'll talk again. I promise this is a it's too good of a program to ignore, all right, Angie S. I'm their executive director, co founder of Heavy Metal Summer Experience h M s E dot org.