Returning from a flight from Chicago, our Homeland Security and Investigations graduate, Kirk Wahrman decided to drop by and say hello. We had lost touch with him for a few months since he was in the process of applying for a health and safety supervisory position on the other side of the US.

Roland (right) making joking remarks with Kirk (left).

Before coming to California Career School, Mr. Wahrman was in the health and safety industry working happily and enjoying his duties. However, an unexpected discovery with his own health had forced him out of the job—he was diagnosed with cancer in March 2009. After several months of testing and various visits to hospitals, he returned to his work place only to find that he was relieved of his position.

This devastating news forced him to turn to the Employment Development Department (EDD) for the next step. “They kept telling me,” Kirk recalled, “You have good experience but you don’t have a degree.” Having been in the industry for years, Kirk’s experience level was high but a school background was lacking. After more dead ends and little progress in his search, Kirk changed his focus and decided to look into the security field. From 1975 to about 1995, Mr. Wahrman served in the Navy . “I was in security many years ago. Getting back into the business, being post 9/11, I knew there were going to be many changes,” he expressed.

“And that’s how I found California Career School,” Kirk said. Various aspects of security needed to be looked at in very different ways than what had been done in the past. “Roland,” said Kirk, “was very supportive and flexible, very knowledgeable, very thorough, generally takes an interest in the students and wants to see them succeed.” Roland Esquivel is our course instructor for the Homeland Security and Investigations course.

We asked Kirk about his favorite part of the course. “Graduation day,” he exclaimed, “with all the food and festivities. No, I’m just teasing. But the sense of accomplishment was there, that I completed a huge 500 hours of training.”

“We studied a lot of real life security issues, things in the news, things that were current.” Students would read these articles and the class would break them down into what laws were applied in those given situations, what procedures were taken, correct and incorrect actions taken towards a suspect, and other types of observations. “It really helped me learn the right way to look at a situation and be a better security officer.”

“Once I finished California Career School, I was considered for higher than entry level positions.” His military background played a huge part in that. Since then, the California Career School placement office has helped Kirk obtain offers from Securitas and Allied Barton. Kirk worked for both of these companies but as of this writing, he will hopefully be returning to Chicago to pursue an opportunity that he recently found in the industry he was originally in: health and safety.

We hope that Kirk will make it into this job as it is the one that he was originally looking for before reaching out to California Career School. It is indeed in his own health and his own safety that we wish him well. We would like to thank Mr. Kirk Wahrman for repeatedly taking the time to come in to visit with big smiles and always something funny to share.

“He’s got a lot of talent—he was a great student,” said Roland, our instructor. “[He] had a lot of fun experiences to share with the class, made the class more interesting… he had a great sense of humor, he will do great at whatever he puts his mind to.”

Author: Sarah Bantay