Girls excel in auto mechanics

Once called, simply, mechanics, they are now "auto technicians." The advent of more sophisticated vehicles and computer diagnostics is attracting savvy students who can make big bucks once they enter the workforce.

Recently at Sahuarita High School, the smell of motor oil permeated the auto bay as a handful of boys huddled beneath a car on a lift, inspecting the transmission. They were intermediate and advanced students in the school's automotive program. About 100 students are enrolled in the award-winning program and many are planning careers in the field.

There is already a need for qualified mechanics, said Claudette Welch, career and technical education coordinator at Sahuarita. As baby boomers continue to retire over the next decade or so and leave the profession, the need will only increase.

A February article in USA Today bears this out. According to the newspaper, the auto industry will need 35,000 new technicians every year through 2010. Currently there are 37,000 vacant technician positions in the country, the article says.

High school auto shop classes are attracting girls as well as boys.

Senior Shelby Emmerich, 18, and junior Sarah Hayes, 17, are enrolled in the automotive program at Palo Verde High Magnet School on the East Side.

Emmerich goes to school full time and works part time as an apprentice at Jim Click Automotive. She also has a part-time job at a flower shop. After she graduates, Emmerich has been accepted by Wyoming Tech in Laramie, where she will get hands-on training in auto-body work.

"It's the best school for what I want to do," she said. "They offer straightforward custom fabrication along with automotive. That was my first-choice school."

She's planning to use the skills she's learned at Palo Verde to refurbish a 1968 Camaro her father gave her.

"Palo Verde's program is awesome. I've had a blast there. I've learned a lot in there," she said.

Hayes has learned a lot, too. So much so that she's already been offered a job at a local dealership once she finishes her post-high school training.

"I like the fact that I get to work with my hands, and it's a really different direction than anything that I've gotten into," she said. "It's really interesting, and you have to be really smart to figure these things out. It's intriguing to me."

Hayes isn't worried about getting dirty working on a greasy car. "You can't really be afraid of that stuff," she said. "Everyone's clothes are greasy, and everyone's hands are greasy, and you really can't be too picky about that."

In his classes at Sahuarita High, instructor Jack Bond said, the female students sometimes outperform the boys.

"I enjoy having girls in my classes as long as they are interested in automobiles and not the boys," Bond said. "Girls that are interested, they will oftentimes beat the boys four ways from Sunday" in competitions and class tests.

"Boys don't like to be beaten by the girls — many of them don't. Some of them laugh and it's just another challenge, but some of them get upset.

"The girls, they get in there and they work. It's very nice to see them up to their ears in grease, and it's fun."

Sahuarita has three levels of automotive classes, from the basics of auto maintenance to the more advanced diagnostic techniques. The students have won myriad awards in regional, state and national competitions, and shelves of trophies line one wall of the school's garage. As a team, they've won vehicles for the program, and individuals have won tools and scholarships.

Even with no post-high school training, students in Sahuarita's auto shop program can get entry-level positions at garages straight out of high school, Bond said. Some dealerships even offer paid training to their mechanics.

"A mechanic can fairly well count on $50,000 a year" or more, he said.

One student, Bond recalls, is now working for BMW and pulling in $120,000 annually.

"I enjoy teaching more than any other thing I've ever done," Bond said. "It's a great feeling to have kids that are succeeding."

For Shelby, it seems like fate

It was all but destined that senior Shelby Emmerich, 18, would go into an automotive field.

Her father named her after the sporty Ford Shelby Mustang manufactured between 1965 and 1970. And Emmerich, who is interested in doing custom fabrication work on vehicles, said her favorite auto designer is Carroll Shelby. Her favorite car? Shelby's 1967 model.

Emmerich likes doing custom fabrication such as that seen on cable shows like "Monster Garage" because it's creative.

"It's more fun than just the motor itself," she said.

Custom fabrication, Emmerich said, "is the fancy stuff like . . . taking a little Civic and making it look like the Batmobile."