State Cracks Down on Two Beauty Colleges

More than 1,000 students at beauty colleges here and in El Monte have been barred from their licensing exams because of vermin infestation and other alleged violations at the school, officials said.

The California Department of Consumer Affairs is also taking the unusual step of seeking to revoke Tam’s Beauty College’s license.

“This is the first time we’ve filed an accusation to revoke a school’s approval code,” said Susan Harrigan, assistant program administrator for the Department of Consumer Affairs’ cosmetology program. “By far, this is one of the worst cases we’ve seen.”

The schools’ owners, Kien Tam Nguyen and Minh Tam Nguyen, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

State inspections of Tam’s Beauty College campuses in 1996 also allegedly found unclean facilities and lack of textbooks and instructors, officials said.

A flood of complaints from students and instructors from other beauty schools prompted state investigators to make surprise visits to the facilities, Harrigan said.

They allegedly found violations such as entire walls covered in molds, equipment that had not been disinfected and restrooms that reeked of urine, investigators said.

“Cockroaches were not out of the ordinary, to say the least,” said Harrigan, who said insects were congregating where manicuring equipment was stored.

Students didn’t receive adequate instruction and were allowed to cheat on time cards that recorded their training hours, the investigation showed.

One inspector saw a student at the Garden Grove school run in and punch his time card to log training hours, then hop back into his car to go to work elsewhere, Harrigan said.

In other cases, students would clock in for classmates who were not present, the investigation showed. The clock itself was unplugged, allowing students to adjust to the hours they wanted, Harrigan said.

When students did attend class, they seldom had textbooks.

“There were rooms of students, and there were no instructors,” Harrigan said. “They were teaching each other.”

The allegations led the state agency to bar 1,038 students from taking their licensing exams.

The school owners have filed a separate civil action to force the state to give students their exams. A decision is expected within the week, said Nancy Hardaker, spokeswoman for consumer affairs.

State officials said they gave the school repeated chances to correct the problems. The school failed an inspection in August 1996, and the problems remained when authorities came back in October of the same year.

State officials sent a letter of warning in February before filing the accusation, but the conditions remained, Harrigan said.

An administrative judge is expected to decide whether the school’s approval code should be revoked. A hearing date has not been set, authorities said.

“We don’t want the students to be taken advantage of and we don’t want the public to be endangered,” Hardaker said.