Lawn Life teaches work skills for at-risk young men

CINCINNATI - Over the past three years, Tim Arnold has employed over 250 young men from Greater Cincinnati at his landscape company called Lawn Life.

However, Lawn Life isn’t an ordinary firm.

“These kids are deemed at-risk youth,” Arnold said Friday while he and his seven-member crew worked on a Sycamore Township yard. “They’re kids who are from the inner city, from foster homes, single-parent homes and different areas where they might not otherwise have the opportunity to learn trades such as landscaping.”

Lawn Life is a non-profit 501-C-3 organization whose slogan is “Persistently Pursue Perfection.” Arnold works side-by-side with his employees because he understands their world. It’s the same world he remembers growing up in Springfield Township.

“I have over 27 convictions on my juvenile record,” he said. “I was Billy Bad Butt doing everything from stealing candy bars to selling guns and drugs, so I know exactly what these kids have been through.”

Arnold’s life changed when he was sent to the Paint Creek Juvenile Corrections Facility at Bainbridge, Ohio. It’s privately owned an operated by Cincinnati-based Lighthouse Youth Services.

“It’s the only state corrections facility without any cells or locks and even without that, we’ve only had two escapes since 1986,” said Lighthouse Youth Services Executive Director Bob Mecum.

Arnold said his time at Paint Creek gave him the tools he needed for the toolbox of life.

“It was actually a facility that taught me differences between right and wrong within my own self,” he said. “It gave me the information I needed to know when I’m making a wrong decision and why I’m making a wrong decision.”

Mecum said the program works because of intense peer and staff counseling.

“It’s a very hard program for the kids,” he said. “It really requires them to look themselves in the mirror, see what they are when they come to Paint Creek and buy into the notion that they can become the person their mom and grandma always wished they could be.”

With his juvenile past behind him, Arnold decided his life’s work would be helping other young men pick themselves up. That’s when the idea for Lawn Life was born.

“The biggest lesson is work ethics,” he said. “Many of these kids come from backgrounds and environmental areas where work is not necessarily promoted.”

When Arnold is on a job, he expects his employees to show up on time, do the job correctly and then they’re rewarded with a paycheck.”

“I want to act as that stepping stone for them so that I can teach them what it means to work and to make an honest dollar,” he added.

Bruce Sullivan learned about Lawn Life when he had a brush with the law. The downtown resident has been with the company for a year and is already a supervisor.

“I think everybody deserves an opportunity and I got mine,” Sullivan said. “You just got to prove yourself once you get the opportunity.”

In 2010 Lawn Life hired 79 young men and by the end of the landscape season 28 of them had found other full-time jobs.

“We try to change one young lives one lawn at a time," said Arnold. Looking ahead, Arnold hopes to own and operate Lawn Life organizations throughout Ohio.

Bob Mecum said he couldn’t be prouder.

“Tim Arnold is the personification of what we are attempting to do at Paint Creek,” he said. “Tim Arnold came to us as a lost soul and Tim Arnold today is one of the most outstanding young men I’ve ever met.”