It was late on a Friday when I got the phone call. Ordinarily I don't answer my phone after five o'clock. I work as a contractor, and my clients know that I am off the clock at that point. I figure anyone calling anyway probably has an issue I'd rather not deal with. Around quitting time at the end of the week I'd much rather be at my local, the pub around the corner from where I live in Tucson, draining a mug of cold beer and cracking salty peanuts into the palm of my hand. The truth is, before cell phones hit the scene, making it possible to know exactly who is calling every time, I made it a solid rule never to pick up after hours. But on this particular day I saw that it wasn't a client calling, it was my mother, and as her only son living nearby that's not a call I can ignore. Her voice sounded panicked as she explained that she'd come home from work to find that the cleaners who come every week had accidentally left the faucet running in the bathroom sink and now the entire apartment is flooded with moisture. Her downstairs neighbors had tried to call her at her office, and when they failed to contact her they called the landlord who is notoriously hard to reach and hadn't picked up the phone on this occasion either. The water had already seeped through the floor and was leaking into the neighbor's living room, the ceiling heavy and threatening to cave under the weight of the overflow.
While it's certainly not the most pleasant experience to go through it's also not entirely uncommon, and you might wonder why my mother was panicking. The answer is that the sight of all that water, and her home at the bottom of it, had brought back memories from a time before we lived in Tucson, when we were living down south and our home was flooded by the overflow from hurricane waters. Along with many of our neighbors, my family lost everything we had, including our home, the home where I had been born and raised along with my brother and two sisters. Those who didn't lose their homes completely spent thousands on water damage restoration, repairing floors and woodwork, ceilings and insulation that had been ravaged by the floodwaters. When people were finally able to return to their homes they found mold was rampant, covering the walls and ceilings like a lacy black and green moss.
I told my mother to take a deep breath, and told her I would call her back as soon as I had located my friend Sam. As a contractor you make lots of connections, and through myriad experiences, both positive and negative, I've learned which Tucson contractors you can trust and which are best avoided. Sam is an expert in Tucson water damage restoration, which means he knows what to do in a situation like my mother's where taking the correct steps early on can save big bucks on restoration later in the game. I found Sam's number in my wallet and dialed the number. Even though it was after five on a Friday, he picked right up.
