Daughters Get a Taste of the ‘Office’ : Careers: Throughout the county, girls--and a few boys--get a day off from school to learn how hard their parents work.

Bankers and cops, missile-makers and clerks across Ventura County showed their daughters the ropes Thursday on national Take Our Daughters to Work Day.

The nationwide event, first organized last year by the Ms. Foundation for Women to give girls ages 9 to 15 a taste of the working world, seems to be catching on in Ventura County.

The 11-year-old daughter of a Ventura police officer watched her father interview burglary victims and rush to aid a schoolmate who wrecked his bicycle.

In Simi Valley, a banker’s 12-year-old twin daughters helped trace rubber checks and load cash into an ATM machine.

And all over Ventura County, girls--and a few boys--were given a day off from school to learn how hard their parents work.

“I think it’s a good idea to work with people, to see what your parents do,” said Danielle Will, nearly 14, who visited her mother Renee Will’s office at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme. “You can get involved with your parents and know what they’re doing and, if you like it, you can go for it--you can go out to do it too.”

But after filing contracts, faxing documents and running computer printouts all day at the missile installation, Danielle confessed: “I learned that it’s not fun to work. It’s hard. It’s confusing if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Twins Nadia and Nicole Lukiewski agreed that they would not like to work for long in their father’s Bank of A. Levy branch in Simi Valley--even though they enjoyed helping tellers handle drive-through customers and stack cash in the automatic teller machines.

“It just seems like it’d get too tiring if you did it every single day of your life, but it might be fun to do it for a little while,” Nadia said.

Added Nicole: “I think I would like it for a couple years, but I think it’d get boring for a while. I want to be a teacher and a writer.”

Yet some girls said they were glad to learn more about their parents’ work.

Riding in a Ventura police car with Officer Tom Randall, 50, Sara Randall watched her father take burglary reports, and confiscate marijuana and crack that a woman reported finding in her son’s jacket.

“I just thought it might be sort of fun to find out what my dad’s really doing--maybe I could be a policewoman some day,” said Sara, 11.

Of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, she said: “I think it’s great, because women haven’t really been able to do anything in the last hundred years. I guess it’s just a good experience for them.”

Officer Randall agreed. “I think it’s important for all kids to know what their parents do for a living,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s fun being with her.”

At Amgen in Newbury Park, 11-year-old Michelle Porter helped her mother with photocopies and faxes, travel requisitions and plane tickets that the clinical research associate needs to oversee research into a drug the company is testing for the treatment of AIDS patients.

“I think it’s pretty interesting how they try to help people,” said Michelle, who approves of Take Our Daughters to Work Day because it can give girls career ideas. “I just think it was really neat and fun.”

Her mother, Linda Porter, heard about Take Our Daughters to Work through her membership in the National Assn. for Female Executives.

“I’m just happy that she has a basic understanding of what I do here in the group for Amgen,” said Porter, 34. “I also hope it will encourage her to pursue professional experiences in her career.”

In Ventura, employees held a daylong vocational program for workers who brought their daughters to City Hall, presenting lectures by top female administrators in city government.

“I learned all the different jobs and what the employees do,” said 13-year-old Erin Absmeier, whose mother, Caethe, works as an analyst in the city Personnel Department. “It’s not the easy work I thought it was.”

But another daughter was more impressed with her mother’s profession.

“She does a lot of hard work and she has to put up with a lot of people,” said Sammy Schlag, the 11-year-old daughter of Christine Schlag, the senior personnel analyst. “I don’t want the job she has when I get older.”

Christine Schlag said of her daughter: “She’s been in to work a lot when she was little. But I really wanted her to hear the speakers and see what opportunities are available to women.”

Eight-year-old Natalie Kiunke, whose mother, Patty, works as a word processor, said she already knows what she wants to do when she grows up: practice law.

She spent half an hour Thursday listening to Assistant City Atty. Amy Albano describe her work.

“It was interesting,” Natalie said. “She told us how to become a lawyer, her schooling and what she does. But I probably will practice a different kind of law.”

Correspondent Jeff McDonald contributed to this story.

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