Work pays off in more than money

A nursery school teacher finds having a secure job and family are more rewarding than wealth. And she’s reaping the personal and professional benefits of sticking to her goals.

At the end of a quiet cul-de-sac sits a home in Sun Valley. The front shows the effects of Scooby, the family golden retriever, who has destroyed much of the landscaping. The home is full of photos of children interspersed with toys and various tchotchkes. Family members shuffle in and out on a Saturday afternoon and gather in the backyard where Scooby’s fine work can again be seen.

Aminta acknowledges that her family has gotten its fair share of breaks over the years, but none more so than the acquisition of her family’s house.

“We actually bought the home from my brother-in-law. He had another home and this home,” Aminta said. “He just transferred the home to us and we bought it off of him, which worked out really well.

“It was really nice, considering how much houses cost these days. We wouldn’t have been able to afford a house otherwise. We’d probably be in an apartment or something. We were very fortunate.”

Aminta, a nursery school teacher, and her husband Alex, seem like the typical American family — two children, two cars and both gainfully employed. However, for Aminta, getting to this point was not as easy as it appears. She and Alex both work extremely hard doing jobs that are rewarding personally, but not financially.

Aminta, 27, was born in Inglewood, Calif., to parents who emigrated from Thailand. Her father worked as an engineer and her mother owned and operated three Thai restaurants and occasionally taught Thai cooking classes at Los Angeles City College. Aminta was very close to her two younger siblings, brother Char, 25, currently a restaurant valet parking manager, and sister Dalyn, 23, a student at Cal State Northridge majoring in business.

Aminta remembers that her mother was not home a lot because of duties at the restaurants. While it was difficult with two working parents, one thing about it sticks out in her mind.

“My dad wasn’t very strict with us, so when mom would come home at night, around 11, it would be way past our bedtime and we would still be up,” she said. “My dad would say to my mom, ‘I told them to go to sleep,’ but he never insisted on it.”

“He’s the same way with my kids now.”

Even though her mother spent a great deal of her time at the restaurants, Aminta’s mom always found time to spend with the children on weekends.

“When we lived in Inglewood, she was helping my aunt, who owned one of the restaurants at the time,” she said. “We would take the bus down to the Sherman Oaks Galleria every Saturday for a slice of pizza and she would have sushi. From there, we would take the next bus down to the restaurant in Studio City. That was our favorite Saturday thing and we did it every week.”

Her family moved to Tarzana in the west San Fernando Valley and opened another restaurant there when Aminta entered the fifth grade. Aminta and her family lived behind the restaurant, which became a major gathering place for Aminta’s family over the years.

“The restaurant was our family and we hung out a lot and everyone was there,” she said. “We had a market next door (to the restaurant) and we’d always go in there and pretend play.

“There was a room upstairs where my whole family would gather and play cards and talk. We kids would just watch and listen to them gossip. Of course, we didn’t know what any of it really meant until we got older.”

Aminta’s family lived in Tarzana for seven years until moving a few miles west to Woodland Hills, where they remained until the Northridge earthquake of 1994. After, her parents moved into their current house in Reseda, conveniently located across the street from Aminta’s current employer, Buonora Child Development Center, where Aminta works as a Pre-K teacher.

Aminta graduated from Taft High School in 1994 and knew she wanted a career with children. She had taken several child development classes while at Taft and as a result, fell in love with the idea of working with children.

She enrolled at Los Angeles Pierce College in the fall of 1994, but did not take her studies seriously.

“I’d had enough of school, so I started failing my classes and even lying to my parents about it,” she said.

Aminta also said she lacked personal and emotional stability. She became involved with a man and soon found out that she was pregnant with her first child, Chan, now 7.

“When I got pregnant, he left me,” she said. “He came back after I had Chan. We were together for five years, but it just didn’t work out. He was an alcoholic and was messed up.

“I went back to Pierce and tried to take a few classes and that’s when I realized I had really screwed up. I made up my mind to go back to school.”

Instead of returning to Pierce, Aminta enrolled at the West Valley Occupational Center across the street from Pierce in 1997 to take classes in child development. She also started working at Buonora while continuing to take a few classes at Pierce and worked as a waitress at two restaurants.

“I thought, my God, I’m never going to finish and I’ll be here for 20 years,” she said.

Aminta found the motivation she needed, however, to concentrate on school and make progress toward her degree once she was single again. She also met her current husband, Alex, while working at Buonora. But the courting process was hardly a smooth one.

“We had both just been in a relationship and he really wanted to go out with me, but I did everything to try to push him away,” she said. “I thought he was trouble and there were rumors (at work) about him.

“I used to tell him the worst things to try to get him away from me, but that just turned him on more. He saw it as a challenge.”

Eventually, Aminta told Alex that she would go out with him if he stopped flirting with her and started treating her like a person.

“He did a 180,” she said. “When some people found out at work, some of my co-workers didn’t like it because of their perceptions of him. But I found out who he is. The reality is, he’s very family oriented and loves to be at home. Sometimes I beg him to go out with his friends, but he doesn’t leave the house.”

Aminta and Alex married in May 2002 when Aminta was four months pregnant with her second child, Mia.

“I knew we were going to get married eventually, but I wanted a big wedding,” she said. “My parents wanted me to do it before I had the baby, so it was a small wedding. But it all worked out because we’re all happy.”

Between their jobs and their children, Aminta and Alex’s weekdays are full. Aminta normally wakes up with Mia at 5:30 a.m. and starts breakfast for the family. She then makes everybody’s lunches and is out the door with Mia by 7 a.m. Alex, now a behavioral therapist, takes Chan to school and Aminta takes Mia to her parents’ home, across the street from her work.

Aminta works until 2, but often stays later to catch up on work and other lesson plans for her students at Buonora. Twice a week, she also attends classes at Pierce College.

“My mother-in-law lives with me, so she does dinner, which is really nice,” she said. “This way I can do things like give my daughter a bath or help my son with his homework.”

Alex usually returns home around 4 or 5 but also has a second job working at AutoZone four days a week, and is about to start a third job working with his brother-in-law to earn a little extra money. Together the couple earns approximately $4,400 a month.

“We’re doing okay, but we’d like to have more,” Aminta said. “We want to build a vacation home in El Salvador (where Alex’s family lives), so whatever extra money he makes goes toward that.”

After the children go to sleep at 8, Aminta uses that time to study for her classes or prepare for work the next day.

Aminta still has her eye on completing her associate’s degree in child development at Pierce and transferring to Cal State Northridge within the next year and a half. Ultimately, she wants to move up from teaching to administration, possibly as a director at a private nursery school.

“I think as a director, I’d make a little more money,” she said. “But being a teacher is a really rewarding job.”

Aminta believes that the choices she and her family have made over the years will ultimately work out for the best.

“This is actually the first time I’ve only had one job and it’s kind of scary. I used to be a waitress at two restaurants and work at Buonora while I was pregnant. But now that I’m just here and able to focus on the kids at Buonora, I don’t think about the money because it’s just fun. At my other jobs, I would think about it more because it was hard work. But money isn’t all, and really it’s never been about the money.”