Nine Lego lovers get dream job offers

Some things - like a favorite toy - resonate with you long after your childhood.

“Legos are the best toy to play with,” said Bryan Decker, a 35-year-old single dad who lives in Ocean Beach with his 6-year-old son, Chandler. “You never lose interest in them. They never lose value.”

The colorful building bricks became a bit more valuable to Decker and eight other Lego lovers Thursday, when they were hand-picked to work for Legoland California.

Ryan Wood, Amanda Jouan, Brian Heins, Joel Baker and Mark Larson were offered jobs as model builders to assist with the park’s planned expansion. Decker, Samuel Swiger, Eric Christie and Dana Bradsema were offered associates jobs in the park’s model-building warehouse, too.

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The associate positions were a surprise to the 18 contestants, who wrangled through a series of challenges and a final, creative build-off for six model-building jobs. In the end, the park offered five people full-time jobs as model builders, and four people jobs as associates, a credit to the talent at the two-day showcase, park officials said.

Model builders work on the Lego creations - like Miniland replicas of Las Vegas and San Francisco, the park’s famed Lego recreation of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, and various colorful characters scattered throughout the park - that are featured in Legoland California. The park has plans to open new Discovery Centre locations in Chicago and New Jersey and a Legoland theme park in Malaysia.

“I saw the models and said, ‘Who gets to do this? Whose job is it to build these things out of Legos? Do they get as many Legos as they want?’” Decker said.  “And, my last question was, ‘Do they get paid to do this?’”

Like Decker and Swiger, an 18-year-old recent Carlsbad High grad, many of the contestants never grew out of the popular toy.

Erik Vanderhagen of Carlsbad works on a Lego creation during Thursday's build-off in Legoland California's model-builder search.

“I didn’t grow out of them, I just never had the opportunity to revisit them and play with them,” Swiger said.

More than 20 contestants applied and participated in three, hour-long challenges Wednesday for the coveted job. They were required to replicate a Lego seahorse, they worked on a team-build project to create a large scale Lego man, and they were given an hour to build a model of their choice.

The 18 contestants who qualified to Thursday’s competition were given two hours to build a model that would fit the theme of the park’s new attraction, Dune Raiders.

Jouan, a 26-year-old Chula Vista resident and recent UCSD grad, had to revisit the concept for Thursday’s creative build, when she realized a model outside the Dune Raiders ride too-closely resembled her plan to build a snake charmer.

She tweaked her design a bit and built a cobra snaked around a sitting Lego man, who had a look of shock built on his face.

Jouan - who said she was a “Lego nerd” as a kid - qualified for the finals the last time Legoland held a nationwide search for model builders, but didn’t make the final cut. She had a strategy on Thursday: take her time, complete a model, and have fun.

It paid off for the visual arts grad - she left the park with a job offer.

“Into the work world I go,” she said. “This is the perfect outlet for me.”

Wood, who traveled from Los Angeles for the two-day competition, said he’ll have to consider whether he’ll take the model-building job he was offered. The 25-year-old married father of one, who graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills with a degree in digital media arts, has been struggling to find a job in television production. His wife, though, would have to leave her job as a paralegal and Wood isn’t sure it’s the wisest choice for his family.

He said he’s sent more than 50 resumes out during the last month and the job hunt has been frustrating.

“It’s exhilarating to get this offer,” he said.

Pay was the only lingering question for the contestants, who weren’t sure what to expect in terms of salary. The pay for associate builders is $10 an hour, and pay for model builders is $12-15 an hour. Wood said it would factor into his decision, Jouan said any source of income is better than no source of income, and Decker said he’ll do whatever it takes to make it work for he and his son.

“He’s the most important thing in the world to me,” he said. “If I can take care of us financially, I’ll eat ramen if I have to.”

Tags: job search, LEGOLAND California, model building, SDNN

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 11:48 am and is filed under Lifestyle . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.