Chart showing total number of Americans claiming unemployment insurance and the number filing new claims, weekly since 1967. MCT 2009

By Mike Cassidy

San Jose Mercury News

(MCT)

Nicole Siu Lan Rancatore knows she’s not the only one who has gone through the drill.

In December, her boss called her in and gave her the speech: No, it wasn’t her. It was the economy. Would really love to keep her. Wished her all the best. Told her to hit the bricks.

“I was like, ‘OK, thanks for the experience and here comes unemployment,’” Rancatore, 27, says now. “I was just like everybody else during that time. I just had no idea what to do next.”

Well, she had some idea. Look for a job. How hard could it be? She was a graduate of Pitzer College. Had done well at her job, first as an administrative assistant and then in marketing, at a Silicon Valley company that places DVD rental machines in supermarkets. Left on good terms.

“I was looking for anything,” she says. “I got really desperate and even applied to be a waitress.”

She didn’t get the job.

“I was terrified.”

It was time for some new thinking. Rancatore and her brand-new husband had been talking for years about doing volunteer work in India. A family friend, Smita Patel, was among those who had started Mountain Children’s Foundation, a nongovernmental agency that works to empower rural teenagers in India by teaching them about their rights and about how to advocate for themselves and their villages.

“Kids are early adopters,” Rancatore says. “So you get the tools to the young early, and suddenly the adults are like, ‘Hey, this is a nifty idea.’”

The young advocates’ work has resulted in change ranging from restoring electricity to rural villages to reforming a local school that had been neglected, according to Mountain Children’s Foundation officials.

That all seemed worthwhile to Rancatore, and well, she had some time on her hands.

“After about five months of finding absolutely nothing in the job market,” she says, “I said, ‘OK. Might as well.’”

Which is how she found herself in Dehradun, India, where she’s been since May working to document the 6-year-old organization’s work in writing and on video. She also writes press releases for Indian media while building a social-networking presence for the foundation. After all, if something is not on Facebook, does it actually exist?

Yes, it was hard leaving her new husband, Peter, behind in San Jose, Calif. He’s a preschool teacher and fortunately, he had a job to do. But Peter understood his wife’s calling.

And yes, there were some cultural adjustments (trading hot showers for bucket baths, no burritos in sight, struggling with Hindi, etc.). But Rancatore says she is lucky to have had the chance to pitch in on a worthy cause in a country that, amid the splendor, has some of the world’s most desperate poverty

Her story is another glimmer amid the economic gloom in this country. Granted, this is no Disney movie. Rancatore is still out of work and has no idea whether her prospects will have improved by the time she returns to the United States in September. And she realizes not everyone who’s laid off can pack up, take off and volunteer — especially those who have house payments to make or children to care for.

Rancatore’s experience shows there is hope and purpose ahead for those who suddenly find themselves unemployed and unmoored.

Rancatore’s volunteer work has given her a new perspective. Before she left, she was practically panicked about household finances. Now she’s seen how some of the rest of the world lives.

“I was really freaked out about material things,” she says. “I had just gotten married. How are we going to afford a house? How are we going to do this? Now, it’s like, ‘OK. Simpler is better.’”

As she spoke to me by phone from India, Rancatore was hesitant to offer advice to others who’ve been laid off. But I pressed.

“I would say just try not to focus on the money,” she says. “Just really, and this sounds very Oprah, but really, you have your friends and your family and your loved ones, and this sounds cliche, but you can get through anything.”

And maybe, as you’re getting through it, you can find something to do that will help others manage with their misfortunes.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Mike Cassidy is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Readers may send him e-mail at mcassidy@mercurynews.com.

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(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

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