NEW Books: Excerpt The God of Second Chances

Introduction: The God of Second Chances

Frank Plescha: the 3Ps

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.

James 2: 18

Frank Plescha is a smart businessman who knows he can’t resurrect yesterday, so he’s doing the next best thing:

He recycles. Everything. He calls it the 3P approach: product, planet, people

Product: Frank’s company, Thermal Flux Corporation, recycles industrial tires, the kind that forklifts and other materials handling equipment run on. Begun in 1996, Thermal Flux, or TFC, collects these dirty tires with no useful life left in them and reclaims them in a grimy warehouse in north Philadelphia. From the old tires, Frank gets new product: chopped-up rubber bits he calls "Kinder-Turf" that functions as playground mulch. Just call it a nice retirement: from hard-core industry service to a cushy life with kids on the playground. The steel tire rims are also rejuvenated into what Frank calls the "Lazarus" line of products that he’s about to start selling. Between hauling away old tires and selling renewed product, TFC came close to seven-digit revenue for 2000.

Planet: Thermal Flux reduces landfill content. All these dirty, worn-out tires would otherwise live on for hundreds of years in the slowly decomposing artificial mountain ranges formed by the country’s landfills. That’s an obvious benefit to the planet. But recycling is happening in another way, too. Thermal Flux is in the heart of de-industrialized north Philadelphia, in a neighborhood that isn’t God-forsaken, but is most certainly industry forsaken. The Stetson hat factory used to be a couple blocks away. Tracks that used to service trains picking up loads of goods and materials from manufacturers still run right down wide American Street, where Thermal Flux is located. Thermal Flux keeps company with vacant lots where factories used to be, shuttered buildings and some old Philadelphia row houses lived in by the people who didn’t follow when the factories and jobs left. Not all the neighbors are friendly, either; the place just got ripped off, prompting some extra door-locking. It’s part of the cost of doing business. The whole area is a federally designated empowerment zone, which means it’s officially certified as in desperate economic straits.

The woebegone status of the area is unofficially confirmed by the reactions of Philadelphians to whom I mention where I’m going: that’s dicey, says one. Let me pick you up, offers another.

There really isn’t a lot of point to having a nicely decorated industrial tire recycling center. Mickey Provience, one of the workers, says he takes a long bath right after he gets home each day. "After the bath they are spotless," he says, holding up his hands, inside industrial work gloves.

The third recycled P in the company’s mission is "people." When I tell him about the book I want to interview him for, Frank says he "recycles" people. He hires guys whose resumes include prison time. He recruits at halfway houses for addicts trying to recover. He’s got work for them, which means a regular paycheck. He’s also got an incentive up his sleeve, or down the road when the bottom line gets a little fatter than it is now. He will make workers owners if they work out. That’s the deal he’ll make them.

Frank does all this "honest to God" for God. But the big CEO’s name wasn’t anywhere in the business plan. "I like doing good by doing well," is how Frank, the company president here on earth, puts it. But the God stuff is there between the lines, in the allusions, in the little streams that occasionally run off the main flow of our conversation, which is about tires and enterprise and economic development and profit-making and Frank’s personal history.

Frank is a retired Air Force colonel who flew the Phantom F-4 in Vietnam. The tinsel they hung on him for his 22 years in the Air Force includes a Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with 11 oak leaf clusters. He flew the Phantom over North Vietnam. Now he says there’s a better way, but he also says that guys need to be in uniform because that’s a requirement with the world the way it is. "Now I’m trying to be an active peacenik," he says, laying the irony on thick enough to hear.

I can spot another person of Eastern European ancestry, as I am: Frank is beefy and has high cheekbones and smallish, deep-set eyes. Let’s back up a little bit to when he was growing up in Croatia. American bombers were bombing his country because it was on the wrong side of World War II. He was driven out of his home during the war, and later came to this country, when he was 16. (He’s 60 now.) When he was a little kid, they were bombing him and he still remembers "those bad Americans." So after he came to this country, he joined the Air Force. That way, he would be safe. He would be the one dropping the bombs.

He started in the Air Force in 1965, when the Vietnam War was gearing up. Combat is where he went and that’s where he learned a lot and that’s where"beside the Bible"a lot of his metaphors come from.

"You never go to combat alone," he says. "Even though there’s individualism in the fighter world, you never fly alone." The other guys in your formation help you cover your "soft side." In military terminology, it’s called "check 6." Somebody else needs to check your six, and you check someone else’s six. Everybody needs to be competent and aware of what everyone else is doing.

" It’s built totally on trust," the retired colonel explains. Here is how he saw the goal of combat flying.

"First and foremost," he says, "you come home. You don’t lose your wing man.
"I lost none," he adds. That’s a point of pride. His sons are another point of pride. Following their dad just as his men did in formation, all three are graduates of the Air Force Academy; all three are active duty fighter pilots. Their portraits hang on Frank’s office wall.

Frank developed some other life strategies from his experience in the skies of Vietnam, He would get shot at, a lot. He took flak. It flew all around him. Flak, he came to conclude, is a fact of life. So he learned to live with flak because he didn’t want to die from it. That’s still a big part of the way he thinks, here on the civilian ground many years later.

"“Flak’s always happening," he says. "There’s all kinds of stuff out there. At that time I need to be flexible enough to respond."

So he deals with flak in his fledgling business, which aptly enough is located in the economic equivalent of a bombed-out war zone. Guys don’t show up for work; the place gets robbed; a whole shift recently got shut down. Frank has to work to re-educate the materials handling field about the economic value of recycling and the reliability and quality of a recycled product (after all, most people want new stuff). He uses a chart to teacher prospective clients in the material handling industry about "cradle to cradle responsibility" a better model than cradle-to-grave— for the industrial tires and other wheels they use.
All in all, there’s a lot of flak to deal with when you’re selling a new idea, running a new business and using new or at least unconventional ways to operate that business.

"Just before Christmas we got ripped off again," says Frank. "It bothers me if I let it."

Getting ripped off flies in the face of the principle by which Frank operates the place: trust. He learned that in the Air Force, but he’s also no fool. People have to earn his trust.

"It’s a jungle," he says, and this time the comparison seems unconscious. "It’s trust within reason."

Right before he mentions getting ripped off, he tells me about a worker who asked for an advance shortly before Christmas. Frank gave him 35 bucks and told him to just take it. A balancing act—whom do you trust?—is going on.

More than once in our conversation Frank says, "I’m just trying for you to get between my ears." He reiterates his motives.

"I see money as a tool," says the shop owner. "Of course I want to make money, but that’s not what drives it. I think if all companies would operate with a social conscience you could do away with all welfare programs. In order to be really free of it, you have to give it away."

On the asset side of TFC’s ledger, Frank has a lot of people to check his sixes. For one, he has the backing and assistance of Capital to People. Capital to People is a multifaceted business tool for businesses that really need assistance to do what they plan to do. For one thing, it’s an investment fund; it operates Murex Investments, a for-profit subsidiary that makes venture capital investments in businesses that meet certain criteria: businesses that operate in economically distressed areas, or that hire employees with low-income backgrounds. It also requires businesses to pay a living wage of at least $7.90 per hour to workers and to provide them with health insurance.

In a 20-month period, Capital to People has invested in six businesses, including Frank’s TFC. Altogether Murex has raised $4.3 million in venture funds, and it put almost half-a-million dollars into Frank’s business in the form of a $200,000 loan and a quarter-million dollar equity investment. The investment agreement gives Murex 24 percent ownership. It also provides 10 percent ownership and profit-sharing for the employees, after the business turns profits to share.

Capital to People, which is one program under the auspices of Resources for Human Development, a $72 million nonprofit organization headquartered in Philadelphia, does more than write investment checks. It’s also a cooperative business system, which means it supplies help with a variety of management functions and with workforce development. "Workforce development" even embraces providing transportation for employees in the form of subsidized van service.

Capital to People runs the books and other back-office functions for its businesses that have annual revenues of less than $2 million. That’s where Frank #2 comes in at TFC. When I meet Frank Plescha, he introduces me to Frank J. Viola Jr. Frank V., as an elementary school teacher might say to distinguish the two Franks, is a business developer with Capital to People. He is there talking business with Frank P., about loans, profitability (when’s that gonna happen?) and workforce development. When he’s not talking, Frank V. is occasionally scribbling on his little Palm Pilot, even while I take longhand notes with old-fashioned paper and pen. He is most familiar with the operations of Murex, the venture fund invested in TFC.

"I represent a little bit of a different venture fund," he explains. "We’re looking to create wealth among the workers." Frank V. reminds me of a seminarian; he’s thin, bearded, bespectacled, with pale coloring. But it’s a business gospel he’s preaching, explaining employee ownership vehicles like "phantom ownership" to offset "tax events."

The guiding idea of the Capital to People program is to bring together—integrate, as they like to say in the business world—capital, management assistance ranging from shop floor layout to accounting help, and workforce development, all areas that can sink fledgling businesses or keep small businesses small and struggling. The program is modeled after Mondragon, a successful European cooperative economic system founded by a Catholic priest in the 1940s. Mondragon attempts to put into practice Catholic social doctrine calling for an economic system that balances social justice with individual rights to freedom and property.

And so the ideas of individual fairness and social justice and the traditional religious belief in the inherent dignity of each human being is woven into everything that TFC does, which makes theological discussion less necessary and shorter. Religiosity is cheap, Frank P. notes. Spirituality in practice happens when the rubber hits the shop floor at this industrial tire recycling center.

" You show me what you do and I’ll show you what kind of faith you got," says Frank P., the business owner who’s willing to hire ex-offenders. When we get a little more theoretical, he does say this: Love translates into commitment, and the highest form of action is love.

" Is that in the Bible?" I ask, trying to stir the waters of discussion more.

" Yes, it is," says Frank V. the business developer. He pulls a classic black leather Bible out of his briefcase.

" I keep my Bible with me," he says, holding it up. "First Corinthians 13." He cites the apostle Paul’s famous letter about the qualities of love. "Love is a positive act."

"We talk about tires," says Frank P. the business owner, " “because that’s the way it’s manifest."

The two Franks evidently enjoy working and talking together. Frank P. the business owner explains it this way.

"There’s a certain soul relationship that underscores the business relationship," he says.

Soul: there’s one of those religion words again.

Israel Rios is the supervisor at TFC. He’s a slight, skinny guy with close-cropped hair, a firm handshake and a slight New Jersey Puerto Rican accent. His work gloves stick out from the hip pocket of his industrial navy blue work pants. He looks much younger than his 43 years.

A little before he came to TFC in February 2000, Israel got out of a Pennsylvania prison. He spent six years there for selling drugs. He needed fast money, and he finally got busted, he explains. He was supporting his own cocaine habit as well as the habits of his clients. When he got out, he was sent to TFC. His background fit the work.

Israel, a New Jersey native, describes himself as a jack-of-all-trades with a background in mechanical work. He’s done a lot of body and fender work, and worked for a metal refinery company for a couple years in the 1980s. He recently got in 6 months of college-level training at nearby Lincoln Technical Institute but work and school got to be a little much, so he put school on hold. Israel starts his day at 6:30 a.m. or so, and knocks off around 7 p.m., since the plant has two shifts. He works Saturdays, too.

Israel is on salary, and he has the responsibility of supervising the crew on the floor. The job is not always easy. "Sometimes I gotta get rid of guys, but I gotta do what I gotta do," he says. "A lotta people aren’t responsible."

Israel also works on the machines TFC owns. Several older pieces of equipment used in materials processing are being computerized, and Israel is able to do that as well as machine maintenance. Israel works with Herbie Schwagerl, a 65-year-old retired German guy who goes way back with Frank. Herbie, who just started getting paid by his buddy after four years of helping out around the place—Frank says his friend is not very religious, but he’s very faithful—does machine design and Israel puts stuff together.

"“I like what I do, like what I’m doing," he says. "(Frank) gave me a big responsibility, too."

Although he quit cocaine in prison, Israel had a little trouble staying clean on the outside; he had a relapse—he used drugs again—and got sent to a halfway house for six months, a term that is due to end the day after we talk. He already has his own apartment lined up near the shop, so he can get to work easily.

The relapse woke him up, he says. It reminded him of what it felt like to be high.
" Sober," he says, "you feel a lot better. You get more respect."
You give it, too. In his selling years, he didn’t really give a damn. "I used to sell drugs in front of little kids," he says. "I didn’t care."

Israel has his own kids, but they’re not little. They grew up with their mother, Israel’s ex-wife, in Miami. Israel and his wife had married in Puerto Rico in the late ’70s, had one daughter there and a second one in this country after they returned. But the parents split during what Israel calls "the crazy era."

He’s stayed in touch with his daughters, now both young adults living in Miami. The older one is 23 and works in information technology for United Parcel Service. The younger one, 21, is working and going to school. But he hasn’t seen them for a number of years. The older one, says Israel, is kind of skeptical about the changes that have taken place in his life. She and her sister will have a chance to judge when father visits his two daughters during a week’s vacation in February.

"It’s been a while," he says. "I’m looking forward to that."

Sipping a cup of coffee that has cooled in a chilly office right off the shop floor, I ask Israel what he had been expecting about the future as he sat in prison for 6 years.

"I thought," he answers, "things were gonna be the same, but they changed. People change."

Israel introduces me to Mickey Provience. Mickey’s a long-time employee here, for three years. Before that he was in jail for 10 years for aggravated assault—"a domestic problem" is all he says about the reason for his incarceration. Before that he worked for years as an art handler at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the place where movie prizefighter Rocky Balboa ran up the steps. Mickey, who is 54, has worked all his adult life, really, because he had a job in prison working in the laundry.

He moves stuff around the shop, heavy tires he can move by hand because he’s a six-and-a-half-foot bear of a guy. He uses a forklift, though, to move big dirty boxes of scrap rubber or metal. As big as he is, he could be taken for a scary guy until he opens his mouth into a great big grin made all the bigger by several missing upper teeth. And he laughs and laughs often.

"I worked all my life," Mickey explains, "and once the realization set in that you got to work, you got to work. I never missed a day, I’m never late."

Mickey lives about 20 blocks away and walks to work. He also attends church nearby, at Berean Presbyterian, a beautiful, dark stone hulk of a historic church.

" There are times you need prayer in your life," he says. "“You need strength to make it through the day."

These days, Mickey and other ex-offenders and recovering addicts are among the wing men, and women, for a retired Air Force colonel who sells a Lazarus line of goods made in this factory in gritty north Philadelphia. I think again of Frank’s repeated remark: I’m just trying for you to get between my ears. He tells me he doesn’t think of things like "success rate" among the workers to whom he’s given a second chance.

"If you go to percentages, I don’t look at it that way," he says. "What’s one life worth?"

His tall body folded into a forklift, Mickey waves goodbye cheerily as I leave. From far away I can see his big grin.

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