CRENSHAW : Students Prosper by the Old Runaround

A group of Crenshaw-area college students is getting a crash course in creative financing.

Strapped for school funds and faced with dismal job prospects, 12 students on summer break put their heads together and came up with Run Us Around, a multi-service business that offers customers help with everything from housecleaning to dog-walking to chauffeuring.

While such tasks may seem menial to some, particularly to those who say domestic work should remain firmly in the past of African Americans, student Misty Wilks said joining forces to start a business--any business--is a step in the right economic direction for young people.

“We were all independently trying to make money, and it was tough,” said Wilks, 22, a law student at Howard University in Washington. “We all sat around and put in individual ideas, and everybody came up with at least one. We were all game for it.”

Wilks got the company going a month ago with fellow students David Moats, Angela Rolfe, Erika Threadgill and Billy Healy. Run Us Around also offers moving services, dry-cleaning pickup and delivery, hair braiding, party planning and gift shopping and consulting.

Services run anywhere from $5 per miscellaneous errand to $60 for cleaning a two-bedroom house (windows and dishes included). Wilks runs the operation out of her Crenshaw-area home.

The colleges students attend include USC, Cal State Northridge and Los Angeles Trade Tech, a local community college. Moats, 25, said their aim is to combine individual work backgrounds and skills to make the services as accessible, and affordable, as possible. They offer moving services at $30 an hour, for example, compared to about $75 per hour at some larger outfits.

A Los Angeles Trade Tech student who plans to transfer to Cal State Northridge in the fall, Moats is a former gang member and ex-convict who has had particular difficulty landing work. Run Us Around, he said, gives him strength in numbers.

“Everybody sees the felony before they see me,” he said. “But you have to start at the bottom to get to the top. That’s how I look at it. If you work hard now, you reap the benefits later.”

Since launching last month, the group has garnered about 10 jobs, mostly housecleaning and grocery shopping. They’ve tried drumming up business at senior centers and other places in the Crenshaw and central L.A. areas, and interest is slowly but steadily growing.

Patricia Vasher said she had extra incentive to hire Run Us Around to clean her house. “They’re students, and I’m always willing to do something to help them,” she said. “And they did a good job, too. I have no complaints about the work.”

The group is also getting some corporate help: Lucky Food Center in Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza offered free copy services after learning that the group is shopping for groceries at the store. And an Inglewood realtor has offered the students free computer use and a slew of leads for large-scale housecleaning jobs.

Wilks said if each member can earn $500 to $600 apiece for books, tuition and living expenses, the group will have accomplished its summer mission. To Tracy Handcox, every little bit helps.

“I have two children, and I have to figure out a way to work, go to school, and raise them,” said Handcox, 21, a student at Southwest College who eventually wants to become a pediatrician. “I have to do what it takes to make money, to do all those things.”

Wilks said she was forced to give up plans for summer school and return to Los Angeles after her financial aid ran out. But she said the experience of forming a small-scale business is providing a unique educational opportunity.

“It’s a fallacy that young people don’t want to work,” she said. “If you ask someone to stand on a street corner and sell a bag of oranges, they would probably say no. But if you structure something, organize it, give it your own ideas, people take a different attitude.”

Information: (213) 294-7606.