Co-workers lift a man’s spirits

COSTA MESA — Christmas could have been a drag this year for Brad Long.

The 44-year-old video production specialist for the city of Costa Mesa needed a fourth hip replacement surgery, he got an infection that threatened to claim his leg, and he only had three weeks’ paid leave from his job but needed several months off.

But in the 13 years he’s worked for the city — 12 of them part-time — Long has made a lot of friends. They showed it this fall by donating more than 400 hours of their leave time to him so he could have his operation, recover and keep paying his bills.

“This could probably have been one of the worst holidays,” Long said in an interview this week. “Normally I’m a pretty positive guy, but when the doctor started telling me, ‘You might not have a leg,’…. I don’t think I could do this job if I had one leg. I know I wouldn’t be carrying a camera.”

But the infection cleared up, and now Long is waiting for a Jan. 5 surgery to rebuild his hip. Meanwhile, his paychecks will keep coming.

Long’s job with the city was a second profession. After a college athletic career that included baseball, Long continued to play competitive racquetball and he helped run a company that sold racquets and sportswear. But a form of anemia and the steroids used to treat it combined to wear out his hip. And even after it was replaced, doctors warned him he could end up in a wheelchair if he didn’t take things easier.

So Long went back to school, studying drawing, photography and accounting. Classmates persuaded him to take a film course, and after that his path was fixed. “Once I signed up, I just from then on knew exactly what I wanted to do,” Long said.

He got connected with Costa Mesa after asking to borrow some sports footage from the city. Soon he was helping produce shows for the city’s cable station, and today he works on a little of everything — City Council meeting broadcasts, DUI training videos for the Police Department, documenting information for city officials.

The most watched programs on the city’s cable channel are youth sports, Long said, but his favorite is his own show, “Discovering Costa Mesa.” Recent programs have been on the model aircraft club that flies its radio-controlled planes at Fairview Park and the Costa Mesa Water District’s treatment methods.

Long has worked on independent films, and he’d considered pursuing more of a Hollywood career. But in his job with the city, he gets to film, direct, produce, edit and be on camera.

“We get to cover all the good things that happen,” he said. “Getting to meet all these people and do all these wonderful shows, I felt like I don’t really need to get into film work.”

And his co-workers at the city feel like family, he said.

They seem to feel the same way about Long — when he left work in September, people in half a dozen departments donated leave time. And they did more.

“To be honest with you, it touched me a lot because of all the other things they were doing,” Long said. “They were giving me gift baskets. There were people in the city that were making sure I was getting at least one card a week.”

City employees sent Long books on tape while he was in the hospital, and they threw him a surprise party last week.

“Brad is the most likable person; he’s a genuine person,” said Carol Proctor, a management analyst for the city who donated some of her leave time.

“He’ll go out of his way to do things for me,” she said. “I love to reciprocate in that regard.”

It’s not unusual for city workers to help each other out like that, administrative services director Steve Mandoki said.

“Even though we’re a large city, 600 employees, it feels closer,” Mandoki said.

Long expects to be back at work in four or five weeks.

In the meantime, he said, “I’ve gotten through hits very nicely, and my spirits couldn’t be higher — and they could have been low.”