"This is what's going to save your life, so you'd better be sure it's working," Mays said. "I don't want to be the one to have to look your wife in the eye and tell her that you're gone."
The potential danger doesn't appear to faze 18-year-old Shelby Young of California City, a dirt-bike rider and the only woman in the class.
"I like the adrenaline rush," she said.
Josh Gates' biggest worry is supporting his family. The unemployed builder, 27, left his pregnant wife and young son in Greenville, Utah, to attend the class. He bunks in a friend's motor home, making the long drive home every few weeks.
"It's going to pay off in the end," he said.
The near certainty of landing a job that pays well has students scampering for available training spots.
Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, N.M., launched its wind program last fall with 32 students. GE offered to hire every qualified graduate for three years, leading to a nationally televised news story. The school has since been flooded with hundreds of inquiries from across the country, spokesman John Yearout said. He's scrambling to find another instructor.
It's much the same at Iowa Lakes Community College, where wind students have "two to three job offers each" by the time they complete the two-year program, spokeswoman Angie DeJong said.
The school will admit 102 students this fall, up from the 72 it had planned to take, because of surging demand, she said. Inquiries come in daily from the jobless. On a recent morning it was an unemployed Nebraska engineer, then a Michigan autoworker.
"We're seeing a lot of nontraditional students with families who have gotten laid off," she said.
California's community colleges are trying to get wind technicians into the workforce faster with the accelerated boot camp system. Cerro Coso and Shasta College in Redding are the first institutions out of the gate. More are on the way.
The goal is to have 50 schools around the state offering wind training within a few years, said Peter Davis, director of the community college system's Advanced Transportation Technologies and Energy initiative.
That could prove a tall order considering California's budget woes.
Students are jumping at the few seats available now. Laid-off house framer Shane Culleton of Rosamond, Calif., borrowed $1,000 from his mother-in-law to enroll in the Cerro Coso boot camp. The 29-year-old father of three is so confident that he'll find a job that he vowed to sell his beloved motorcycle if he fails.
"It's going to be a while before construction comes back," he said. "I've got to do something."
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marla.dickerson@latimes.com
