Over two dozen young men in Alexandria are learning how to foster a successful career in skilled trades with the help of an Alexandria-based nonprofit.
Roberto Gomez, the CEO of remodeling company Even Scale, founded Cornerstone Craftsman in 2021 with a vision to dispel cycles of generational poverty through trade education. Today, his program works with 28 apprentices, providing mentorship and training in skilled trades, as well as math and science tutoring.
“When I was in school, there was only the college or military routes, and I knew they weren’t for me,” Gomez said. “I probably didn’t do as well as I could have, because I thought those were the only answers.”
Past apprentice Gabe Espinoza told ALXnow he’d be flipping burgers without Cornerstone Craftsman. Instead, the 18-year-old recently became a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26, and is making pretty good money.
“I always had the urge, the feeling of wanting to work,” Espinoza said. “That came naturally to me. What didn’t come naturally was the knowledge. Four years ago, I didn’t even know how to hold tools the right way.”
Espinoza spoke to ALXnow on the bus home from a work site. He started two months ago and makes about $2,700 a month.
“Today I was cutting up exit signs and installing lights,” he said. “The other day I was building circuits, throwing cable, slicing wiring.”
Gomez said Espinoza sends him daily video texts of the projects he’s working on. Gomez looks at the texts proudly before showing them off.
“See, this is what one of our apprentices is doing now,” Gomez said. “This is cool. He sends me videos of himself on his job sites. Here he’s showing me lights he’s wired.”
Last month, Gomez and his team were presented with the Rising Star award at The Chamber ALX’s Best in Business awards. The moment when Gomez stood onstage and accepted the award starkly contrasts with how he started the organization in 2021 with his own funding.
How it started
Inspiration first struck Gomez as he sat in bed forming a project agreement, four years ago.
“It was like some type of divine touch,” Gomez said. “My brain shut off everything I was doing for my company, and I said, I’m gonna time travel and save myself. I’m gonna go back in time and be the messenger for kids like I was and I’m going with the message of the trades, with the lived experience that I have, and save myself.”
The CEO started networking, making appearances at school and community events. He recruited five boys to start, and later expanded his personal rolodex within the city by becoming a member of the Alexandria City Gang Task Force, the Sheriff’s Community Advisory Board, the Alexandria Community Safety Forum and the Alexandria Police Foundation.
At the time, he brought the boys to paint rooms in people’s houses, “because that’s the only place I had to take them.”
“I told these kids I was going to teach them the trades,” Gomez said. “The kids think I have a plan, a master plan the whole time. Literally, I’m desperate to figure out where the next place we’re going to go is.”
In 2022, the Alexandria Police Department donated a satellite office for the nonprofit next to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. Earlier this year, Simpson Development donated use of a two-story office at 2111 Eisenhower Avenue.
Over the years, Cornerstone Craftsman Board Chair Kate Comfort, executive director of The Comfort Family Foundation, said the program’s impact has been “unbelievable” to watch.
“This is a program that is unlike any others that I have ever seen,” she told ALXnow.
Building character
The goal of the program is to get an apprentice placed in a career, and Gomez and a half-dozen volunteers are contending with education gaps. It’s not all about swinging hammers.
“Construction is a lot of math,” Gomez said. “The learning curve with a lot of the kids we serve is having to make up for their lack of understanding in math, in concepts of math, while simultaneously teaching them how to apply that math in real time, measuring something, cutting something, hanging it where two 45 degree angles meet and make a 90-degree angle.”
The nonprofit’s space features a lower-level workshop, where apprentices continually build rooms and break them down again. They also receive Occupational Safety and Health Administration certifications and master skills like CPR and First Aid.
The second floor, the career and education center, is where apprentices sharpen math, science and soft skills.
“We focus a lot, not just on the skill set development, but ensuring that when they have the interview that they’re looking at you in the eye, they’re shaking your hand, they’re telling you who they are,” Gomez said.
Apprentices work Thursdays and Saturdays and are given $115 every two weeks in “benevolent assistance.” Collectively, they also receive 900 pounds of donated groceries each month from ALIVE!.
So far, only a handful of apprentices have graduated high school and are now working in the field. There is currently a waitlist of 28 participants, including girls.
Gomez said that the nonprofit is working on eventual expansion.
“We don’t want to increase the number of kids until we can be very sure that we’re giving the same depth of service and same amount of wraparound support,” Gomez said. “We’re a very time-intensive program, and that is deliberate and absolutely by design.”
A better future
Union apprenticeship programs require qualified members, Gomez said.
“They have to get through a test,” Gomez said. “But once they get through that test, the odds of earning high amounts of money, and life-changing money, is very doable, and it’s going to happen.”
Recently, Espinoza returned to his former peers at Cornerstone Craftsman. He showed up wearing new clothes; a sign of his newfound success.
“I’m very grateful I became part of the program,” Espinoza said. “If Mr. Roberto wasn’t there in my life, I don’t even know what I’d be doing now. I’d probably working in some fast food parlor. I’m very grateful.”
