Jenkins Laid Down the Law to Pursue His True Passion

Fred Jenkins doesn’t consider himself a hero. He is, honestly, a little bit embarrassed by the attention.

Jenkins, 30, is an advanced placement European history and economics teacher at Placentia Valencia High. He is also an assistant football and wrestling coach. Jenkins was an athlete at Valencia himself, a 5-foot-9, 175-pound defensive tackle and center in football and a distinguished wrestler, winner of three Southern Section championships and a two-time qualifier for the state tournament.

There are thousands of people like Jenkins, men and women who return to their alma mater to give something back, who have passion for educating teenagers, who have patience to keep up with them, who have enthusiasm for getting on the wrestling mat with some cocky junior and taking him down.

But here’s where Jenkins is special.

A graduate of Harvard with a degree in economics and of Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, Jenkins came home five years ago to a high-paying, fast-track position with a Newport Beach law firm. He was involved in civil litigation, in government law. He was working 80 or 90 hours a week, feeling sometimes as if he were a cement block on a chair in front of the computer, immovable, undistinguishable, doing grunt work that all beginning lawyers do. The future, though, would be filled with nice raises and big houses and fancy cars, the Orange County dream.

Except Jenkins couldn’t stand it.

“It sounds corny, I know,” he says. He is sitting in his empty classroom, a room crowded with desks and a blackboard filled with the next lessons. When Jenkins walks across the campus, a student stops and calls out, “I’m ready to talk to you about that project, Mr. Jenkins,” and another asks, “How ya doing, Mr. Jenkins?”

“This is what I didn’t get at the law firm. The feeling that I can make a difference.”

When he was a sophomore at Valencia, Jenkins was introduced to a Harvard alum who informed the Ivy League school that Jenkins was a good student and a good wrestler. When he was recruited by Harvard, Jenkins says, “Wow, did I feel good.” Ivy League schools offer no athletic scholarships, so Jenkins got some academic aid but mostly his parents paid.

Jenkins thought about becoming a premed major until he took biochemistry. He settled on economics as his major because it seemed a solid, substantial career choice. But when Jenkins was ready to graduate, he wasn’t ready to become a businessman. So Jenkins took the law school admittance test. And then he was admitted to law school.

“Did I have a burning desire to be a lawyer? I don’t think so,” he says. But he finished law school, paid for it himself, and landed a good-paying job so he could pay off those loans. Everything was wonderful except for one thing.

“I just wasn’t happy,” Jenkins says. “I wanted to be coaching. I wanted to be teaching. I had long talks with a friend at the firm and what I finally decided is that the money isn’t the most important thing. Being happy and doing something which matters, that’s what is important. At least to me.”

Jenkins qualified for an emergency teaching certificate, a piece of paper that qualified him to become a teacher and go to school, again, to acquire his teaching degree.

Now Jenkins is making a third of what he made as a lawyer. He has taken on roommates because he still has those law school loans to pay back. He has had to take qualifying courses, such as geography, in order to be accepted into a Cal State Fullerton education program, which he will begin attending next year.

This seems silly. Jenkins won’t complain. But let somebody. A man with a Harvard undergraduate degree and a law degree from a UC school has to take a geography course? He must take, and pay for, more teaching courses at Fullerton even though, for nearly three years now, he has been teaching advanced placement classes and gotten rave reviews? “It’s what I have to do, and so I’m glad to do it,” he says.

It is through no grand plan that Jenkins is at his old high school. Mike Marrujo, Jenkins’ football coach and the football coach still, said he would be happy to have Jenkins as an assistant. The school had an opening for an emergency certificate position. So, was this meant to be? “Maybe,” Jenkins says.

Most of the kids know that Jenkins gave up the money and power that comes to lawyers. They give him a hard time, call him crazy, wonder what’s up. Jenkins tells them he wants to be in the classroom every day and on the practice field every afternoon.

“It’s going on three years now,” he says, “and I have not had one moment of regret. Not one. I’m doing what I’m meant to do now. I can’t tell you how rewarding every day is.”

That’s the great thing. Jenkins doesn’t have to tell anyone how rewarding the day is. His perpetual smile does that.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.