They're So Vein: Tapping A Job Market

"Yes," Chasteen says, with a chuckle, "it's gonna hurt."

"Oh, Lord."

And then, prick, it's over -- not with a bang but a whimper.

Instructors Chasteen, Bennett Fomen and Kesia Dixon call themselves the Caduceus Fans and threw a "tattoo party" in Largo a month ago at which they each got a little black caduceus -- the winged staff of Greek god Hermes wrapped in two snakes, a traditional symbol of medicine -- under the left ear. They say it's a sign of their earnest desire to help people take other people's blood.

"We don't do no oranges or food up in here," Dixon says of the difference between the Caduceus Fans' classes and lesser programs that promise to teach students everything in a single day, and then have them practice on fruit or dummies. "The dummies," Dixon says of this class, "are your peers."

Tanita Moore, 32, isn't even enrolled in tonight's class, but came to get a jump on Saturday's session. "I actually got stuck six times Saturday," says the bank teller and mother of two. "I was loving it." She promised her dying mother earlier this year that she'd enter this field, which she hopes will lead to nursing. "Somebody always dies and someone's always being born and somebody always gets sick," she says. And in today's economy, that line of reasoning may become infectious.

"I expect to see a lot more interest among people . . . who are looking for extra income to take the short road to a quality profession," says Dennis Ernst, the director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education in Ramsey, Ind., and publisher of Phlebotomy Today. Northern Virginia Community College has already filled its 16 phlebotomy spots for the fall semester.

In the front of the lab, Hayden Cochran, 52, faces a dangling skeleton. His partner, attempting a microcapillary collection on Cochran's middle finger, bends over and botches the poke with his metal lancet. Cochran's hand, pocked with holes, begins to spurt blood. "You're talkin' about surgery!" Chasteen cries.

Cochran just shrugs. "I've been shot at," he had announced earlier, noting his years in Harlem and the 3rd Ward in New Orleans.

Now he tries to soothe his partner, a man squinting through small gold-framed glasses. "You did fine, you did fine," Cochran says, still leaking blood onto a pink cloth. "You did great."

A former tennis instructor and car salesman, Cochran moved to Washington in February, following his ill mother. He enrolled in the course "because all the skills that I have I don't have certificates for." He's an imposing man -- he keeps popping the large latex gloves, prompting the instructors to call him "Big Daddy."

"I wanted a skill in an enclosed environment, in a growth field," he says. "The class is relatively short, the course is relatively inexpensive. . . . I'm told as you go up in continuing education courses, you can ask for money."

As it turns out, he gets the opportunity just an hour later, when a representative from Unity Health Care enters the class and says her company is hiring.

Students rush toward her, scribbling their numbers. But Cochran has a question: "How much do you start with?"

"It depends on your experience," says Unity's Tracie Washington, who attended Sanz herself. They go back and forth for a minute more, Cochran pushing for a figure and Washington demurring. Until finally he attempts a coup de grace.

"I'm very confident," he tells her. "Not cocky, but confident."