2,000 Make a Splash for Water Park Jobs

Nature had been sending raging waters across Southern California all week, but there wasn’t much around Saturday at Raging Waters in San Dimas.

No tides ripped through the drained Vortex ride. The snack shops weren’t open, and the Typhoon Lagoon was a dry skeleton of a water slide.

But you would have thought it was a hundred-degree day in August: a queue of more than 2,000 eager teenagers snaked single-file around the waterless San Dimas water park.

Some had arrived as early as 7 a.m., and by the time the place opened at 9 a.m., they were ready for the ultimate thrill of the park’s scariest attraction: The water park’s annual job fair.

Calling itself the title of “the biggest employer of teens in the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire,” Raging Waters attracts thousands of applicants every year for its 500 summertime jobs--kids who want “to get good job experience,” said Ken Kowalski, marketing manager for the park. “They get the opportunity to get trained and learn valuable skills.”

They also get paid--albeit minimum wage--to go to an amusement park every day. So save the motivational lectures and “valuable skills” catch-phrases for the interviewers; Lisa Sherrick had other motives for applying.

“I want to get a tan,” said Sherrick, 17, a high school student from Pomona who woke up “way too early” to vie for one of the 500 openings.

“It’s a cool job. You get to stand out in the sun and meet people,” she said.

“Cool” was a common reason for applying among the would-be water workers.

“It’s such a cool job. I mean, it’s the happiest place on earth--besides Disneyland,” said Stacey Smoot, 17, of Walnut.

“But this is closer to home.”

Smoot and some friends, wearing everything from warm-up jackets and jeans to skirts and blouses, sat outside the main gates at one of several picnic tables set out as a kind of pre-interview purgatory--”Stop Two,” as personnel called it.

There, teenagers sat for hours, waiting to turn in their applications, discussing among themselves why they want to work at Raging Waters and mocking people who walked by.

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After a few hours, Smoot’s group moved to Stop Three, the “burger and fries” booth, where adults in suits and ties collected applications. From there they waited until their names were called.

But like a tourist who just got off a popular ride, full-time security guard Manuel Iniguez told the waiting applicants that the chance to work at Raging Waters is worth the long lines.

“It’s the place to be,” said Iniguez, 18, who was hired last year. “It’s a good experience and a great social atmosphere.”

It can also be exhausting work, so an important quality in a job seeker is enthusiasm, said Daniel Busser, one of the park’s 25 interviewers.

“I’m looking for communication skills, someone who is not afraid to put themselves out in front of people, not inhibited,” he said.

Well, if Raging Waters wants extroverts, 17-year-old Jasmine Norman said they should look no further; she’s perfect for the job.

“My motto is, if you give me a person-to-person interview, I’ll get the job because I have the gift of gab,” said Norman, who hopes to land a job at the admissions gate so she “can see everyone as they come in.”

An easy-going Claremont High School student, Norman was calm when she sat at a plastic table across from her interviewer.

But the experience of a first-ever job interview made many of her friends jittery.

Smoot sat straight up in her chair, her shoulders tense and her hands clenched as interviewer Jeff Douggan reviewed her application.

“So why do you want to work at Raging Waters?” he asked.

“Because it’s coo . . . um,” she said, correcting her teen-speak. “It would be a good experience.”