Hidden Heroes: Meet the custodians who risk their health for our need for clean.
By: Eva Ortega
They’re seen folding tables out for big events in the quad, zooming around on their carts down the narrow paths behind the Center for the Arts building or saying “good morning” as they wipe a mirror clean next to you.
When the school closed its doors in early 2020, students, faculty and administrators became accustomed to being home more often. With the status of the outside world worryingly uncertain, many took shelter from those risks by cozying up on their couch to binge watch tv shows or picking up wacky new hobbies.
The custodial staff, however, kept on under business as usual. Taking advantage of the empty campus, the college assigned them the daunting task of cleaning the entire facility from top to bottom.
For day shift custodians Richard Caldwell and Candelario Diaz, the work they did throughout the pandemic wasn’t harder, so much as it was a “different routine” that required getting used to. Under normal circumstances, they would have been forced to work quickly, careful not to impede on the space and time of students and faculty that might need to use a classroom or office.
The pandemic then gave them the liberty to deep clean facilities in a way that was always needed but never done. In some cases, this meant cleaning out rooms that hadn’t been touched since the late 1980’s.
Certain staff admit the operation was tedious. They began to butt heads. Some were unsatisfied with the quality of sanitization given to some rooms, while management argued that it was best to clean more than clean deep.
Finally, after 15 months worth of decluttering, disposing and sanitizing, they spent the bulk of last summer installing air filters throughout the campus’s 39 buildings in hopes that students would at last be able to return.
“We were never gone,” Diaz said. “Not one day. We were here, every single day and we did our best to do detail in literally every single room. Walls, floors, everything.”
The pair are just two of the nearly 40 custodians who work to maintain the 54-acre campus.
When one needs help, the other jumps to his aid. In between duties, they joke with one another and have made playful enemies out of the army of food hungry squirrels that plague the school.
At times, they even finish each other’s sentences.
Their relationship is a natural closeness that has developed over the course of the 24 years the two have worked together.
“We’ve been here since the school was built,” Caldwell jokes, making them both laugh.
According to Caldwell, who has three decades of service to PCC under his belt, self-discipline and a commitment to establishing safety for others is what keeps him coming back every day.
“If we don’t do it, somebody gotta do it,” Caldwell said. “The last thing I want is students getting sick because of something simple like a water fountain or bathroom not being clean.”
Beyond the basic duties of pulling waste and recycling from bins throughout the school, they are entrusted with cleaning up emergency chemical spills, broken glass or biohazardous materials.
The knotty process of running a top California Community College like PCC means that each moving part of it must run efficiently and without fail — that is, professors must show up to teach, administrators figure out a way to keep the lights on and centers on campus like Personal Counseling or the Lancer Pantry makes sure to address needs students have outside of the classroom. However, none of the stakes of these responsibilities are quite as high as they are for custodians.
Take for instance, the hypothetical spread of a staph infection, a common yet potentially deadly type of bacteria that can easily spread from person to person from unclean surfaces.
“If [that happens] an entire building would have to be shut down and we’d have to spend extra time bringing it back up to where it needs to be, which would force us to neglect [cleaning] somewhere else, making everything worse,” Diaz said.
“And you know what would happen because of that?” Caldwell interjects. “Students would fall behind in their plans here. You can’t learn if you don’t have a classroom to do it in.”
Diaz’s example exposes the exceptionally high standards of custodial work, where they’re expected to deliver flawless work day-in and day-out. Mistakes are never an option.
“It’s a trickle down effect,” Diaz says. “If you suffer, we suffer. So, it takes all of us. It takes every single custodian to get it right. One time.”
More critically, the work of PCC’s custodial staff, many of whom belong to BIPOC backgrounds, selflessly expose themselves to risks in order to maintain safety for others.
A study by the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund found that essential workers like custodians, especially those who identify as Latino, were hit hardest by the pandemic. Not only were they more likely to contract the disease but they were 3 times more likely to be hospitalized and 2.5 times more likely to die from it compared to their white colleagues.
Those who work in the custodial arts are also more likely to suffer injuries at work. In 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that those who clean buildings, including janitors and other cleaners, suffered nearly 34,000 occupational injuries and illnesses. Such weighty risks are hardly in balance with the wages most custodians are paid.
Just this March, custodial workers at the University of Southern California organized a protest demanding “respect, dignity, and a livable wage.”
USC janitorial union president David Huerta told USC Annenberg Media,
“…For an institution that’s worth upwards of $5 billion to only offered 30 cents to essential workers, I think it’s not only an insult to these custodial workers who have basically maintained this this institution operated operable during these full two years. But in my opinion, it’s an, it’s an insult to working people.”
At the mention of these efforts, both Caldwell and Diaz nod their heads in respect.
The funds available to PCC, of course, are stark in comparison to private research institutions like USC. Though, given the hearty endowments PCC has readily accepted in recent times, including the $30 million sent directly from the fourth richest woman in the world, It’d befit the college to look after those who continue to put themselves on the line for the entire PCC community.
Even still, more money isn’t necessarily what custodians like Caldwell and Diaz are after.
When asked how they’d want appreciation built for them on campus, Caldwell, sitting atop his red Taylor-Dunn cart, shrugs his shoulders and smiles.
“Just tag along with us,” he says. “See what we do. Let’s look at the campus together.”
Caldwell insists that keeping clean is only half of what goes into the job.
“We do public relations too,” he said. “Yeah, we clean, sanitize, but going into every building and corner of the school, you run into people and start to talk to them everyday, check in on them.”
Diaz, who makes an effort to greet any and everyone he sees on campus, agrees.
“I always ask ‘hey, how are you doing?’ because I want them to feel welcome, I want them to feel they have a safe zone,” he says. “There’s some people that’s like, you never know. They can be going through something in their personal life and that one person can change your outlook on that whole day and even their whole life.”
And on the off chance that an opportunity does present itself, they allow themselves to dream of flashy upgrades anyway.
“You ever been to SoFi stadium?” Diaz asks. “It has a roof on it but it’s all open so air can blow through it. Almost like a carport type deal. If we could get something like that, it would let us park everything that’s inside — outside.”
He’s referencing the ultramodern, state-of-the-art roof that crowns the home of Los Angeles’ two football teams — the Chargers and Rams. Made up of 46 panels, SoFi stadium’s innovative roofing is aerodynamic and can be opened or closed to accommodate moody Southern California weather.
Something with the same versatility would be equally useful to PCC custodians who, housing their carts at the backend of the Facilities Services building, often have to cleverly strategize the way they store them. Fitting them in a bid to escape the sun or rain can often feel like playing a game of Tetris.
“Having something like that, we’d love that,” Diaz says. “It’d be amazing.”
The custodial staff are the people who work behind the curtain to ensure the college runs reliably and safely. They’re here around the clock, often overnight, prepping facilities throughout the campus for use the following day. Despite often going unseen, the work they contribute to the campus community can go beyond the simple act of cleaning and polishing.
They’re student advocates. Mentors. Friends.
