De’Onn Wooden remembers that Beaverton courtroom – and that judge – vividly.
“The judge was calling different people and he was handing out sentences for people,” he said. “Big fines and jail time. Then it was my turn.”
The judge did not look like an empathetic man. Wooden was wrong on that score.
The judge gave him a chance. And Wooden took it.
Now, 30 years later, Wooden is completing the paperwork to open his own electrical-services company. He expects to be in business in late August and plans to hire women and minorities who want to get into the trade.
He wants to give people like himself – people who’ve been knocked around by life, people who could use a break – a chance to prove themselves.
“I know all about racism and roadblocks,” the 53-year-old Vancouver resident said. “I’ve always been a man just trying to make it to the next stop in life. I’ve run into plenty of roadblocks. I learned nothing could stop me forever. I moved forward by going around that roadblock.”
Wooden grew up in Compton, Calif., where he said his future seemed clear – dead or in prison.
“There were gang shootings every night,” he said. “Even if you weren’t in a gang, you could get shot. I had several friends killed. One was in the wrong neighborhood. Gangs beat him. He made it home, collapsed and died. He was 15.”
But then Wooden’s family moved to Perris, a town near Palm Springs. This wasn’t a perfect situation – he was one of the few Black kids there, and he felt it – but it gave him a chance. After graduating from high school, Wooden enrolled at a Phoenix trade school and earned a two-year degree in drafting.
He returned to California, but jobs proved difficult to come by. He couldn’t figure out how to get a career started. One of his older brothers had moved to Portland and told Wooden it was nice up in the Pacific Northwest, so Wooden decided to go too.
“I was 20,” he said. “I got off the train, looked to the West Hills, saw all the green and thought, this is the life for me.”
It wasn’t. He found a place to live in Beaverton and a series of jobs, but he couldn’t get ahead, couldn’t find his calling.
And it sometimes seemed like Beaverton didn’t want him there.
“The police pulled me over all the time for minor driving violations,” he said. “I believe it was because I was Black.”
He moved to Northeast Portland, hoping to fit in better. He met a woman, fell in love and they had a son, but the relationship later ended. He joined a church and found steady work – in the maintenance department for a hotel and at a local print shop.
He didn’t love what he was doing for a paycheck, but he could pay his bills – barely. He was beginning to think he’d finally found his place in the world.
Then another curveball: In 1993 he was served an arrest warrant from the Washington County District Attorney’s Office. All those traffic violations in Beaverton had caught up with him. He owed some $9,000 in fines.
As a show of support, Wooden’s pastor came to the courtroom with him. When Wooden stepped before the white judge, he was nervous.
The encounter started out poorly.
“You see this paper in my hand?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” Wooden answered.
“This is a warrant for your arrest. You see that police officer standing behind you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s going to take you to jail.”
Wooden’s pastor then stood and asked the judge if he could speak.
“What do you want in my courtroom?”
The pastor explained Wooden was on the right track in life.
“The judge looked at me and asked if it was true,” Wooden said. “I said yes.”
Wooden recalls the moment in detail.
The judge said he’d suspend the warrant and knock down the fines to $1,500, telling Wooden he had to pay $50 a month until the books were clear.
Wooden agreed.
But the judge issued a final warning before sending Wooden on his way.
“If you’re one day late paying,” the judge said, “I’m personally coming to get you.”
Wooden walked out of the courtroom a man with a mission.
“I had the opportunity to get it right,” he said. “If I had gone to jail, my chance at a good life would be over. I decided to get a goal and stick to it.”
Wooden, who never had the chance to thank the judge for this second chance, worked whatever job he could find, sometimes two or more at the same time. He never missed a court payment.
“My father is a hard-working man,” said his son, Dreydon De’Onn Wooden, 30. “Even as a little kid all I saw him doing was working. He made it happen. We had food on the table. He did whatever it took.”
Not too long after the judge knocked down the fines, a fire damaged a room in the church Wooden attended. He and other parishioners volunteered to remove debris and do some basic repair work. The church also hired an electrician, Riad Nasry, the owner of Alpha Electric, to rewire the room.
“I was watching him work,” said Wooden of the electrician. “One day he was trying to put up a ceiling fan. It was difficult and he said he’d come by the next morning to finish it.”
Wooden remained at the church that evening.
“I wasn’t an electrician,” he said. “But I studied the instructions and put the fan in. The next day the electrician saw it. I told him what I’d done. He checked all my work. It was perfect. He asked if I’d like to come work for him and learn the business as an apprentice.”
It was, said Nasry, an easy choice.
“He jumped in and did the work,” said Nasry. “That is the kind of man who needs an opportunity.”
Wooden got his license, worked for Alpha Electric for a few years and then moved to larger companies, learning new skills, as well as how to manage customers and other electricians.
“I enjoyed taking something people can’t see – electricity – and make something out of it,” Wooden said. “I can drive all over Portland and know exactly where I worked. That gives me great satisfaction.”
In 2019, Nasry, the man who gave Wooden the chance during the church project, called and ask him to come back, this time to be the company foreman. Wooden oversees residential and commercial jobs in the Portland metro area.
“I am truly blessed,” Wooden said. “I got friends that have been in prison 25 years. I had a friend who did 25, got out six years ago and died last year of a heart attack.”
Wooden, a single father, always told his son, to never quit.
“Nothing is given to you,” he said. “Work hard and then it’s going to be harder. Bitterness doesn’t gain you anything. All it does is keep your heart sick.”
Dreydon, who works as a designer and salesman for Grillworks Supply Co. in Beaverton, said his father has been a role model in his life.
“Surviving the streets in Compton during that era meant you could lose your life saying the wrong thing or looking at someone the wrong way,” he said.
“That’s how my father lives,” he said. “Don’t take things personally. Just do your job. Do a good job.”
De'Onn Wooden describes himself simply. He is, he says, a man just trying to make it to the next stop in life. When he encounters roadblocks, and he's come up against many, he just keeps moving forward.
Time is precious, and De’Onn Wooden doesn’t want to waste it. A few months ago, he told Nasry that he dreamed of starting his own company. Wooden wanted to have his own shop.
The owner not only gave Wooden his blessing, he also gave him a van to use, the first van in what Wooden hopes will one day be a fleet of work rigs.
“When he worked for me, he helped my company make money,” said Nasry. “He was such a hard worker. I gave him a van because I respected him as an electrician and a man. I am proud of him.”
Now, Wooden said, he wants to help other people.
“Two older men – a judge and an electrician – changed my life,” said Wooden. “I want to be that for other people.”
Wooden said he plans to help women and people of color become electricians by offering apprenticeships and helping them study and earn a license.
Wooden’s parents are gone.
But he carries his father’s message in his heart.
“He told me to watch people and learn from them,” he said. “My father told me to always keep moving forward. I’m just a hard-working electrician.”
— Tom Hallman Jr
503-221-8224; thallman@oregonian.com; @thallmanjr
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