The Alamo native finished his tour with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division by leading a machine gun team in Iraq. Now he is an apprentice carpenter, shaping the wood frame of a new middle school sprouting up in San Ramon.

The clamor of hammers and screeching of saws has replaced the roar of bullets and bombs, but Ong still falls back on at least one skill forged in combat.

"Balance," he said this week, pointing up to the rooftop rafters where he often works.

Ong, 23, is among the first returning Iraq veterans in Northern California to take part in a new initiative designed to bring ex-military personnel into construction work. The congressionally funded "Helmets to Hardhats" program operates nationwide, administered by a nonprofit trust and chaired by representatives of both labor unions and employers.

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Veterans re-entering the civilian work force can turn to several government agencies for assistance, and some companies like Home Depot have specifically tried to recruit former service members. Helmets to Hardhats takes a new approach by serving as an independent operation funneling veterans into a particular industry, said Dan Caulfield, the managing director of the national program.

"The real difference between this program and anything else that's going on is it's being run like a staffing business," said Caulfield, an entrepreneur and former Marine infantry officer who co-founded Helmets to Hardhats with his father, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Matthew Caulfield.

Such programs fill an important niche, said Gary Villalba, veterans service officer for Contra Costa County.

"Employment is a big item for returning veterans," he said. "It sounds like (Helmets to Hardhats) is a sincere outreach from the trades' perspective to our veterans that are coming home."

Ong, who enlisted after high school, served at Fort Bragg before being deployed to Saudi Arabia and later Iraq. After nearly four years in the service, Ong returned to the Bay Area last October. He worked odd jobs and took community college classes but wasn't satisfied by either.

Ong's frustrating search ended in April when he came across the Helmets to Hardhats site while searching job listings on the Internet. Through the program, he entered the Northern California Carpenters Apprenticeship Training program, a mix of on-the-job and classroom education that typically lasts four years.

There are currently three Helmets to Hardhats veterans in the Northern California carpenters apprenticeship program with a fourth starting soon, said Terry Callan, district coordinator for the Carpenters Training Committee.

There is a long waiting list to get into that program, which provides a starting wage of $18.75 an hour in the Bay Area. Participants get regular raises and new benefits until they graduate as journeyman carpenters earning $31.25 an hour.

Gary Nelson, a veterans work force specialist for the California Employment Development Department, said Helmets to Hardhats is especially helpful for younger veterans who have not yet started careers. But he wishes it could help more.

"It's been pretty tough to get into the apprenticeship program for some of these guys," he said.

Callan said that the Carpenters Training Committee is working on a way to get Helmets to Hardhats veterans special status so they can go to the head of the waiting list. He expects contractors to be amenable. "The veterans were always very successful in the program because they came with a work ethic," Callan said.

Pete Stringer, a superintendent with Fairfield-based West Coast Contractors, said that Ong, whom he supervises at the San Ramon job site, is an example.

"He tends to be a little more mature, actually, than the other young apprentices," Stringer said.

This past week, Ong described his work at the future site of Windemere Middle School.

"Here you walk away and you know you built part of this building," Ong said. "Every day you want to walk in and build something else."

The experience has been fulfilling enough that Ong suggested Helmets to Hardhats to an old friend who was undergoing the same rough adjustment.

Chadd Visintainer, also 23, enlisted in the Army after graduating from San Ramon High School in 1999. His four years in the Third Infantry Division took him to Bosnia and later Kuwait and Iraq, where his unit was the first to cross into Baghdad.

When Visintainer left the Army in December he did not have a clue what he would do. He bounced around, taking different jobs, such as stocking shelves at markets.

The work was grating after what he had been through. He moved to Fresno to be with his brother.

"I just didn't know basic things. I kind of forgot how to deal with the population," he said. "I didn't like to be around a bunch of people. I just kind of separated myself."

When Ong told him about Helmets to Hardhats, he checked it out on the Internet, then visited the union office and signed up. Now he is an apprentice on a crew building a jail in Fresno.

It's not quite the Army, Visintainer said, but it's a good way to rejoin the working world.

"It's teamwork, hard work," he said. "It's not one of those jobs when you just clock in and clock out at the same time."

Dan Laidman covers small businesses and professional-services firms. Reach him at 925-943-8263 or dlaidman@cctimes.com.

MORE INFORMATION

"Helmets to Hardhats" is a program that helps connect military veterans with jobs in the construction industry. In Northern California, the program is supported by the Building Industry Trust, a partnership between contractor associations and carpenters unions.

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