Photograph by Chris Ahrens

“Dad created a culture of caring and works to understand every employee, treating them like family. He does the same thing with many of our customers — to the extent that he can.” says Josh Hansen (right), with his brother Christian, sitting on their parents' front porch.

It’s another dreary Monday morning in this, the summer of yuck. As what feels like the whole world races onto a single, dreaded workaday I-5 onramp in Oceanside, stress reaches the breaking point. Horns honk, fingers fly, rage breaks out like a thousand small wildfires.

Taylor Guitars leader Andy Powers with a guitar he built using 100-year-old materials and 100-year-old tools.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

About a mile north of that miserable incline is the city’s Stater Brothers Market, a place operating in what feels like direct opposition to the scene on the freeway. Now, I’m not suggesting that this retail grocer is worthy of sharing Disney’s “Happiest Place on Earth” moniker. Still, despite the lack of talking rodents or rollercoasters cleverly disguised as spaceships or runaway trains, it is, to my eye, anecdotally speaking, the happiest supermarket in all of South O’side.

I am standing at the Stater Bros. check-out counter with two bagels and a small orange juice when the checker flashes me a smile that feels about four degrees warmer than obligatory and then asks about my morning with what sounds suspiciously like sincere interest before telling me how much I owe. For a moment, I am wholly taken in; my heart warms, my guard drops. Then my journalistic skepticism ruins an otherwise pleasant moment as I recall the words I read long ago on a scrap of paper taped to a newsroom wall: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

My training and disposition quickly convince me that I am witnessing nothing more than the fallout of a morning pep talk. Some screwy manager with dreams of profitability through positivity has gotten to this cashier. Maybe even bullied the poor soul with threats of “Smile, or else.”

Hansen Surfboards founder Don Hansen at home with his dog, Taco.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

“So, what makes you so happy?” I ask with what I hope is disguised sarcasm.

“I love my job?” she replies. There it is again — that tone that is nearly indistinguishable from sincerity.

“Why?”

“It’s the manager,” she says, her smile widening.

Ah-ha! I knew it! The manager is to blame! Seeking further evidence, I wander off through the store to hassle a busy stock clerk and an equally engaged butcher as to why they are looking so happy on this, the week’s lousiest day. They each offer polite replies laden with backyard philosophy before mentioning the manager as one reason they actually enjoy their jobs. I am kerflummoxed, even though I know that’s not quite a word. Those responses are why I’m writing this story.

It turns out that Stater Bros. manager Joel Nunez runs a ship that is as tight as it is joyful. Consequently, I cannot wrangle him into surrendering the precious time required for an in-depth interview of him and a few employees.

Undeterred, I decide to pursue the happiness-on-the-job angle sans Joel and his team. That’s when I quickly hit another roadblock, realizing that most of my proletariat acquaintances would rather be anywhere besides work. I just don’t know that many Joels. But after a hundred or so discards, I am left with a diverse handful of happy workers. Several of these are employed in North County’s oldest surf shop. One is the leader of a program mentoring kids on probation. One is highly ranked among the top guitar builders in the world. Each works as hard or harder than anyone I know. So, what makes them love their jobs?

Hansen Family Values

Hansen Surfboards officially began in 1962 in Cardiff by the Sea, where founder Don Hansen hand-built, tested, and sold surfboards under his own Hansen Surfboards label. A latecomer to the game, Hansen discovered the bliss of the surfing life after hitchhiking from his hometown in Redfield, South Dakota to San Diego. It was in the summer of 1955, and Don fell in love with surfing so deeply that he was willing to undertake the long, tedious journey of learning how to build quality surfboards. He had no idea then that this seemingly trivial pursuit would culminate in his becoming a board-building icon (not to mention a surfing and sky-diving legend). Perhaps more impressive: the retail store he founded has born the family name for over six decades, and has employed several faithful workers for about five-sixths of that time.

Hansen Surfboards went from a one-man surfboard-making operation on Cardiff’s Coast Highway, to the expansive action sports outlet it is today.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

I recently interviewed Don and his sons Josh and Christian in the home he shares with his wife Shirley, overlooking the gentle surf of Cardiff Reef. According to Don, “One reason I never tire of my work is that I like knowing about people, where they’re from, and who they are. Making friends through our store has been a great joy for me. Some of our customers began shopping here decades ago, and now I’ll see them coming in with their children and grandchildren.”

Son Josh continues, saying, “Dad created a culture of caring, and works to understand every employee, treating them like family. He does the same thing with many of our customers — to the extent that he can.”

Christian adds, “We really are one big family. Many workers surf together after work, and if anyone among us is hurting, we all hurt together.”

Adds Josh, “Don has been there for his employees to the point of helping them buy their own houses. The rest of us are simply riding his coattails. Currently, some of our employees are caring for family members. To me, it’s common sense that family comes before anything, and if someone needs to be with a family member, they go, knowing that we’ll take care of them the best we can. When Covid hit, we were closed for a while. We could have made a business decision then, but we made a people decision and continued paying everyone.”

Don is split between listening to our conversation and watching the surf, just as he has been through much of his adult life. You can nearly feel the lifetime of memories washing over him like waves. Turning back to the conversation, he says, “I love talking to some of our customers; others, not so much. Sometimes someone will approach me and say, ‘I bought a surfboard here in 1999; it had a single stringer; do you remember it?’” Everyone laughs.

Josh adds, “We kind of laugh about that, but there’s something special in how someone connects to that surfboard and the brand.”

When asked how the Hansen kids manage to follow in their father’s footsteps, Christian replies, “It’s really simple: work hard, be honest, and love what you do. People from all over, out of state and even from Europe, will approach me and say, ‘This is our annual stop.’ And that sort of comment helps me remember that we’re here selling fun.”

Former gang rivals Joe Taulau (left) and Timothy Jackson are now Resilience mentors, trying to warn kids away from gang life.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

Considering the probable bias of immediate family, I decide to chat with some people who have worked at the store for decades — the people who consider the Hansens to be a kind of second family.

According to office manager La Tessieri, who started with Hansen almost 45 ago, “From the beginning, Hansen’s was family to me. We’ve worked well together, even in the hard times. Getting through Covid was especially tough. We did everything we could to keep going even after the shop was closed for 50 days. The Hansens worked very hard to keep people in paychecks. They wanted to ensure we all had jobs when the situation was over.”

After being accused of stealing while working for one of Hansen’s competitors, Ken Rodgers sought and found employment with Hansen Surfboards. According to Rodgers, “When I applied for the job, I told Don why I had been fired. He hired me and paid me more than I had asked for.”

Julie King began working at Hansen’s in 1976. She once considered leaving the company to follow her dream of skiing for a winter in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. However, she recalls, “I was there for all of three weeks before realizing I wanted to return to Hansen’s.”

The Joy of a Depressing Job

Nobody who knew Larry Sauls in his youth would have thought he would become a mentor to troubled youth, much less a pastor. But Sauls excels at both jobs, in part because he was a member of the 187 Mob Crip Gang in Vista before serving 13 years for attempted murder. Having since found redemption, he now gracefully balances the responsibilities of a wife and six kids, being senior pastor of Atmosphere of Faith Christian Church, and running Resilience, a mentoring program for youth caught in the web of gang life. Unpaid as a pastor, Sauls took a 50 percent pay cut to work for Resilience.

While he wouldn’t have it any other way, his turn from the streets has not been a smooth ride. Sauls says, “There was a fella I was mentoring; I allowed to sleep at the church. I helped him get a valid ID, gave him a job, and paid him to work at Resilience and the church. He was making money. He had no expenses, but I soon discovered he wrote checks on the church’s account. I kicked him out of the church and told him he couldn’t return.

“Sometimes, when you work with snakes, you get bitten, but you recover and get back on your feet. It’s not that everything is terribly wrong; you have success stories. Still, it’s depressing when you run into these sorts of hardships while mentoring youth and watching kids go in the opposite direction you want them to. Whenever one of them gets locked up, I’m left wondering, ‘Why couldn’t I connect?’ You hope the seeds you planted will someday take root, but that usually only happens sometimes. It took me until I was 32 years old, after getting out of prison, to realize I had to do something better. If I didn’t, I knew I was going back.

“As a kid, a few people tried to steer me in the right direction. One of them was a man named Rodney, who worked at the Boys & Girls Club. He made sure you did your homework before you played sports, but at the time, I didn’t want to hear from him or anybody telling me that gang-banging was the wrong direction.”

Two big success stories at Resilience come directly from the mentors. Once upon a time, Timothy Jackson, formerly of the Deep Valley Crips, and Joe Taulau, a former member of the Deep Valley Bloods, “tried to take each other’s heads off,” according to Taulau. These one-time violent rivals now work together to help get kids off probation, showing them that reconciliation, even between enemies, is possible.

With six kids and two full-time jobs, Larry Sauls reclines at Resilience, the youth mentoring program he currently runs in Oceanside.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

They and other Resilience staffers teach and model the benefits of clean, sober living without gang affiliations. But it doesn’t always work. According to Sauls, “I went to court last week to help represent a kid. There, I saw a youth we had graduated from Resilience, awaiting sentencing. He had been clean and sober and doing great. Everything was working for him, but it’s easy to forget that what’s keeping you out of trouble is sobriety. Not going to parties might seem boring at times, but one of my mottos is, ‘Boring is safer.’ Most kids don’t plan on committing a robbery; it’s spontaneous. Being caught is never part of their thinking. They get caught up in the adrenaline rush of the moment. Generally, most kids who get into trouble aren’t disciplined to think about future events. They want it now. That’s where parents and mentors come in. Kids need to realize that they’ve got 60 minutes in an hour and are about to trade 59 minutes for one minute.

“If I get four or five kids off probation and lose one of them, it still hurts. Overall, however, I never knew life could be this wonderful. My work is gratifying even though this job can be depressing.”

Joyful Noises

Andy Powers is the chief guitar designer, president, and CEO of Taylor Guitars. At 42 years old, he has never had a job he didn’t love.

Andy Powers grew up in Encinitas, where he was influenced in equal parts by surfing, music, woodworking, family, and friends. His father, Chuck, worked (and still works) as a carpenter and taught each of the three Powers children to carve wood and play music. Years ago, there were five workbenches in the Powers garage, ranging from the largest, Chuck’s bench, down to the smallest, his daughter Sarah’s.

All of the Powers kids showed promise as woodworkers. Still, Andy outpaced even his father/mentor and took things many steps beyond. “I was around eight years old when my father brought home a scrap of wood, and I thought, ‘I can build a guitar from that.’ What I ended up with, however, was a guitar-shaped object that ended up breaking. Instead of sawing wood and watching a guitar come out the other end as I thought would happen, the whole thing blew up into a pile of splinters. Because it didn’t work, I thought, ‘There’s more here than I figured; try again.’”

Guitar builder Andy Powers in his home shop with a 100-year-old block plane he still uses.

Photograph by Chris Ahrens

Over the years, Andy tried again and again, each time failing less and getting closer to revealing his potential for building high-quality wooden instruments. His combination of natural talent, nearly unstoppable tenacity, and a humble, joyful temperament soon caught the attention of Taylor Guitars founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug. Today, a short list of those who use instruments custom-made by Powers includes Taylor Swift, The Edge, Zac Brown, Jason Mraz, Elvis Costello, and Paul McCartney.

According to Andy, “While I have never had a job that didn’t involve working with my hands or playing music, I think there’s enjoyment to be had in whatever job someone does. I took to heart the words my dad told me a long time ago, ‘You should learn to love working, because life is filled with a lot of it.’

“Even when you love what you do, however, there’s the work part of art. I always hope to make something that looks and sounds beautiful. That’s really enjoyable, but there’s a lot of drudgery along the way.

“I love building custom guitars, in part because it puts me in touch with each person’s story and how they express themselves through music. When asked what they get from my guitars, I hope they say it sounds and feels like them. Watching someone delight in an instrument I’ve made for them, they’ll inhale and not exhale for a minute, like their world just got more expansive.

“Being in a crowd watching a musician play an instrument I’ve made always gives me a sense of wonder. I sometimes think, ‘I don’t remember putting those notes in there; that sounds like them!’

“One of my biggest fears is that I won’t have enough time to do everything I plan on doing. I always have these thoughts; some are two weeks out, and some are six months out. It’s like this mental bulletin board where you pin your thoughts. Celebrating those initial flashes of inspiration that explode in a room is fun. It can be even more beautiful seeing somebody have a vision and then slowly, methodically chip away at it until it becomes what they want. To me, that shows more devotion and discipline. It ends up being a refinement of both the person and the work.

“Sam Maloof, whom I met when he was in his eighties and I was in my twenties, was a great furniture maker and an absolute gem of a person. He lived his entire life with his work and person integrated. Everything was one giant project all the time. In his nineties, he started working on this gigantic spiral staircase. He wanted to shape and texture the underside of every step so you could see it above you. For over a year, I watched this thing take shape. Then, after a year, it was done and gorgeous. That taught me to approach everything with a sense of purpose, and know where you’re going, because if you don’t, you might end up in a place you don’t want to be.

“We all want something to be perfect. Even though we can’t get there doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There’s beauty in the attempt.

“To me, it’s an important day when someone realizes that their life is not about them. I love building guitars, and working alone was very rewarding. But who benefits from that? Maybe the dozen or so musicians that I get to make instruments for. I’ve worked for Taylor unofficially for 15 years and officially for 12 years. I now help provide for the thousands of people around the world who gather materials for these instruments, the thousands around the world whose livelihoods depend on selling them, and the hundreds of thousands of musicians who get to enjoy the guitars we build.

“I love making things with my hands that turn into things interesting to use. I love the making, and I love the using.”