What area do you work in within the VPFA portfolio?
CPFM Facilities Services – Custodial swing shift crew

What is your current position, and what are your job responsibilities?
As a swing shift custodian, I have cleaned a lot of buildings across campus. I currently work in Lawrence Hall and Johnson Hall—they are very different buildings. Lawrence Hall hosts a lot of art studios and creative classes so you can find paint on the floor in certain places. In other buildings I would spend a lot of time trying to clean everything up, but that’s impossible in an artistic space like Lawrence. Johnson Hall has lots of marble and that brings its own set of cleaning challenges!

I care for the buildings, including doing general cleaning and reporting safety issues. If the roof is leaking or there is anyone suspicious in the building, us custodians radio that in.

I clean offices and interact with the building users, which can include students, faculty, and staff.  I have worked on the day shift, which starts at 6am and ends at 2:30pm. I was the first day shift custodian at the Ford Alumni Center and had to go through an interview process—it was a pretty big deal. Now I am on swing shift, which means I work from 2pm to 10:30pm; I interact with people in the afternoons and then the campus gets much quieter in the evenings.

What has been your career path, including challenges you had to overcome, that led you to your current position?
I have had a pretty interesting career path, with lots of experience along the way in education and business. I have done a lot of different things!

I graduated from Lane Community College with a degree in early childhood education and a professional nanny certificate. This led me to work as a professional nanny in the San Francisco Bay area. The job granted me some interesting opportunities because I was a nanny to some pretty wealthy families. I worked with a family that was in the jewelry business and so I traveled with them to France, Switzerland, and Italy. I then moved into the business side, working for a nanny placement agency. Initially we had one office, but we eventually expanded to three in the bay area—I was recruiting and placing nannies from all over the world.

My parents used to own Jim’s Landing in downtown Springfield. My dad bought it—a swinging door tavern—when he was in semi-retirement after running a successful state-wide masonry business. My parents remodeled the dive tavern into a popular and busy restaurant and lounge that offered live Country music nightly and great food for over thirty years.

As my parents got older, I moved back to Oregon to help them run the business. That is hard work, but I loved being around people, and getting to work with my family.

When I was getting ready to have my daughter, Chloe, I decided that I didn’t want her growing up around a bar so we sold the business and I got a teaching job at Lane Community College. I ran a classroom, which functioned as a teaching and early childhood development lab, for many years. We specialized in infant and toddler development so students studying education came to do their practicums in my classroom. A number of HeadStart teachers started in my class.

Unfortunately, budget issues eventually led to LCC cutting the infant and toddler program. I was offered a position at HeadStart to help develop their early childhood birth-to-three program. I was there a year and then budget cuts intervened again. After that, I got a job at the Vivian Olum Child Development Center, right here at the university. I worked with infants and toddlers for many years—it was a great job. There were some staffing issues, which led to changes at the center, but I was determined to stay at the UO, which is a great work environment. I asked around and was lucky enough to talk to some people connected to the custodial program—that led me to work on the custodial staff at the university. It has been quite a journey, with twists in the road, but I am very happy where I am.

What do you like about your current position?
That it’s active and physical and offers the opportunity to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in my work each and every day.

And I like that my phone doesn’t ring in the middle of the night, like it does if you own a bar or run a nanny agency!

Tell us a bit about your family.
My mother was half Syrian—my grandfather emigrated from Syria. Food was definitely her love language! If my friends didn’t want to go home they would come over and stay with us because there was never any shortage of love, laughter, and food—that’s how my mom showed us all she loved us and welcomed us. My father was Native American and Irish. I get my love of human connections and extroverted character from my father. My dad was very liberal; he was an active Democrat with a lot of social activism and engagement in our family. I had three older siblings—so I was the youngest of my parents’ children.

There are currently two great loves of my life: Chloe, my beautiful daughter who is 23 and lives a wonderful, happy life in the Whiteaker.

The other great love of my life is Hazel. She’s a Jackadoodle, which is a mix between a Jack Russell and a Poodle. She fills my empty nest and brings me endless joy.

How do you want to be remembered?
I would like to be remembered as someone of service who helped others make their dreams come true.

(May 2023)