Cleaning Business Life

CBL EPISODE #83-Dealing with Illegal Finds inside Clients' Homes: Navigating Drugs, Firearms, and Risky Clean-ups

• Shannon Miller and Kimberly Gonzales • Season 2024 • Episode 83

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Have you ever wondered how cleaning professionals handle the discovery of illegal items in clients' homes? Jamie Runco of Above All Cleaning Services joins us to unravel her experiences—from stumbling upon drug paraphernalia and large sums of cash to encountering firearms. Jamie shares her invaluable insights on managing these tricky situations with discretion and safety, and also highlights the evolving norms around cannabis use and the peculiar requests that sometimes come with it, such as cleaning bongs or dealing with explicit art. This episode underscores why setting boundaries and making informed client choices are crucial in the cleaning business.

Get ready to learn actionable tips and essential precautions for cleaning environments riddled with potential hazards, like marijuana resin and dangerous substances such as fentanyl. Jamie and I delve into the importance of professional training, certification, and involving insurance when dealing with these risks. We also explore the need for clear policies and protocols to prepare cleaning staff for encounters with illegal drugs, firearms, and other hazardous materials. From handling discovered firearms to the challenges of retrieving them from police custody, this episode offers a comprehensive guide for cleaning business owners and their teams to navigate these complex and risky situations confidently and safely.

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Speaker 1:

Oh well, no, I hit something. It says recording.

Speaker 2:

Oh, we're recording. Is it recording? Okay, perfect.

Speaker 1:

And I hit okay up here a while ago.

Speaker 2:

Ladies and gentlemen, while Jamie tends to her dogs, zoom has taken out the recording in progress when you actually press record, because the AI notes start to record at the beginning of the meeting and we don't get going for a little while, so there's no prompt anymore. What happened, zoom? What happened? I know my name is Shannon Miller, I'm your host of Cleaning Business Life and today I'm joined with Miss Jamie Runco of Above All Cleaning Services in Northern California. Yay, of Above All Cleaning Services in Northern California. Yay, and today we are going to talk about what to do when you see illegal items in someone's home, or what not to do. What are some of the things that you've run into while you have been cleaning homes?

Speaker 1:

I think I've even called you before I very, very first started with the coaching and mentoring with you. I think I even called you in a panic. There was, and these people were. You know, drug addiction does not. Can you hear my dog barking? Okay, so drug addiction does not.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't discriminate at all a deep clean for a wedding gift, for, you know, for a wedding gift. And she lived on site, but she lived in a like a cabin in the back on the property and and I'm just like you guys knew that we were coming, I would have been cleaning everything up. Everything was so, so picture perfect, like the great family professional photos everywhere. Um, just um, works in a hospital. Um, just, you know, you would never in a million years to select what I ran to, which is, uh, there's a bunch of foils in their bathroom, cut up, foils that were bent and you could see, with pins that had been taken apart so that they could smoke their stuff, their drugs. And I was just like, like I just it was all over. There was black, I guess whenever you burn the bottom of the foil. There was black all over on in the bathroom and I'm just thinking you knew the cleaning techs were coming today. And this is whenever I was still in my business A long time ago.

Speaker 2:

I'm now. It's starting to come back.

Speaker 1:

I didn't know what to do. I'm like this is an outrage. You know at first and I you told me you're in somebody. You're in somebody else's house, right? So I have learned since I came across you're making a bed, you're fluffing. Oh, there's a nine millimeter under there. People we live in such a rural area that people shoot off guns and AK-47s, like this is their thing right.

Speaker 2:

Guns are not illegal, by the way, but they are not the normal items. If you're not used to dealing with them, like I live in arizona, nine out of ten people have guns, multiple guns, not just a gun. We have, we all have.

Speaker 1:

I've seen stacks and stacks of cash, huge bags of marijuana with stacks of cash over it. You just you're there to clean and I do not. I'm nonjudgmental.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of what this area is known for, though, too, so it's kind of like everybody we live in what's called emerald triangle, where this used to be in the 70s and 80s and was a huge place for people to come and make these huge grow operations. So that's kind of the norm here. So, but whenever you see stacks of money, I we're talking hundreds of thousands, not a thousand here. You know you just um feather dust around it around it.

Speaker 2:

And, um, I did not see it, I did not see it, I did not see it. So you have to. Really, it's a conscious thing. So you have to decide at that point what you're comfortable with and if you walk into a home that has a lot of that type of stuff, you that might not be a good client for you. I'm not saying that you should take them on or not take them on, but it's discretionary decision that you need to make for what is best for your business. Um, because you are going to run into things that are not typically legal with the, with the cannabis movement and how it's boomed. Um, it really has it's, it's more commonplace than before. Um, you guys have all heard me talk about the story of the guy who has a home in Prescott Lakes which is just a gated community and he had all of these weird self-portrait images with him in the Game of Thrones lady I can't remember her name the blonde, yeah.

Speaker 2:

They were very provocative, very like almost nude. You can almost see everything, but not quite everything. And we had this. I had to go over to this house and this is before it became this is probably in 2018 um, and he had all these bongs out. He wanted us to wash the bongs and I'm like we're not touching that. So it became like a whole, like who's going to be more dominant, and so you know, I don't become alpha very often, but if you push me hard enough, I will like push back. It's just my nature. I'll let you have a really long leash and then, when I get sick of you, I'll I'll yank it back. It's just what I do. Um, and, and we did. We got in a huge thing because he wanted us to hand wash his bongs, which were in phallic um figurines and I was just like.

Speaker 2:

They were in various sizes, and I'm like you're making people blush, it's just like. And at the time it was illegal for us to even touch any of the stuff because it's you know, the person who had the medical marijuana card was only allowed. It was illegal for us to even touch any of the stuff because it's you know, the person who had the medical marijuana card was only allowed. It was just this whole weird, uncomfortable dynamic because this guy we call him we referenced the Game of Thrones guy. Right, I have like juice or something on my face. It's probably from my pink lemonade. So you just have to like decide whether you're going to do it or not. At the time, cannabis was not as fluent as it is now in our society, so we couldn't really legally touch it and I didn't want the responsibility and it was, you know, they were fall like symbols and I'm just like I'm not touching your little weenie bongs, I just don't feel comfortable doing it, because they called me over there, because they weren't gonna do it and and it was this whole weird dynamic.

Speaker 2:

So like, when we first went into the house they had to a lady answered the door, didn't identify herself, didn't say hello, didn't get excited. The cleaner's there. She said stand in this spot and do not move from this spot. And I'm there, they were like, so they called me. They're like they don't want us to move from the carpet in the foyer. It was just like what? And then when the bond. So then they did the cleaning and then he goes well, I want you to wash. There's like 15 bongs. I'm like how many bongs does a person need?

Speaker 2:

there's a market here for that, though, right so it's just, you know, and this is like seven, what 2018? So it's been like seven or eight years, right? I know, can you believe that so much has changed since then. But we you know you have to decide what you're comfortable with Firearms.

Speaker 1:

What your cleaning techs are comfortable with.

Speaker 1:

Right, not everybody is comfortable with firearms, right or not, everybody's comfortable with being around illegal drugs. Being around illegal illegal drugs, I will say I had a 98 year old lady that called me for her son. That was um. She was a power of attorney over him and she asked me if I do you guys happen? Uh, no, no, we don't. Um, he had, uh, what was it? Oh, he got hit by a car whenever he was 17 and um lost most of his mobility. So, yeah, we cleaned his house, but he would have, he would have, he would have resin and if we you know anything about marijuana, it's very sticky and he had it blown everywhere and it was um for those of you who had a clean resin, usually a magic eraser and a degreaser or simple green will work.

Speaker 1:

That's my I have actually on my um. On my business page, if you scroll down at above all cleaning services, there is a um, a video of me actually using um. It's called five in one. Uh, it's a great product and anyways, I use that, showed that how to use it and it came right up. So, um, people say, uh, alcohol, uh, whatever you know a lot of people whatever. It's just uh, messy, very sticky and it can take a long time and that to clean and um, I believe I charged just for that one room, um, and it was probably the size of this room here, about 500, to get all that up. So, um, it is an upcharge and it's a whole different segment of the market is just marijuana cleaning.

Speaker 2:

If you do that, exclusively reach out, I want to interview you, yeah no, and there is.

Speaker 1:

There should be an upcharge of that because we can do it. We can get it up, but it's whether or not your company feels comfortable with. Just because it's relaxed here in California doesn't mean it's like this over in Kansas or you know just different spot. And some some cleaning business owners could just really think that this is a heavy duty drug and that you're right. Just, you should have some policies in place for your cleaning business or for your cleaning techs and whenever you come across these types of things, make sure that you prepare your tech that you will come across. There's going to be times when you come across this and ask them how, how are you going? How would you feel? These would probably be a good interview questions, um, when you're interviewing, uh, how would you feel if you came across something illegal or or a gun, which we know is not illegal? But you know, these are good questions to ask Whenever you're interviewing, right?

Speaker 2:

We ask I mean, with the exception of one person with the personal protection weapons we ask that this, these types of things be put away. But sometimes people forget, you know, and then you just have to go around it, don't touch anything. Um, is there an? Occasionally you will come across real illegal drugs and at that point you have to figure out what you're going to do. I'm not giving you um my opinion on either one, I've just know from experience. So, like if you were to walk into a house, um, and it was, there was a bunch of fentanyl. We just did a huge bus here in Prescott Valley. It was, um, I think she's going to be spending many years. They had 2000 fentanyl pills that they found on her Um and that's a special claim.

Speaker 2:

Well, you can't. You could die if you don't know what you're doing. It's not something that you arbitrarily can go. I'm going to spiffy this up you can die. So don't take on a job that you don't know anything about. That's a special type of cleaning and in some cases, like with crack houses, you can't go in there and clean a crack house. It's not.

Speaker 1:

Whenever we're in the middle of purchasing. I've had. You have to. If meth was made in that home, it has to be specialized cleaned. It can get written off and sold or rented or whatever the case may be. It has to have a special clean and we as down here of course I'm looking to get certified in all this because I have to in my state it has to be a special clean. That's not something that you can just go in there and touch and you need to tell the client that that will take a specialized clean.

Speaker 2:

So right here. You know the homeowner will try to be cheap about it too, especially if it was a rental, and they'll go well. I have 500 bucks. Fentanyl cleanings are several hundred thousand dollars cleanings. There's not any sugarcoating about it.

Speaker 1:

They're usually talking about the insurance.

Speaker 2:

We're going through the insurance pipeline at this point too, so you need to make sure that a if, a rental, that you have coverage for that and be that the homeowner will try to get done. And you know they're like oh, I'm going to make a quick 500 bucks. You could die if you don't know what you're doing. You could expose yourself inadvertently. It could touch your skin. I mean there's so many different protocols you have to, you have to suit up I your skin. I mean there's so many different protocols you have to you have to suit up. I mean there's all. You have to have an ozone machine in there before you, even suit up.

Speaker 1:

There's a whole protocol that has to be followed for those, and that's if they're lucky, right. Sometimes you got to get the walls cut out. You know, or or just yeah, just make sure you know your state laws too, whether or not you can even touch that, if it's legal or not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you have to be careful. Sometimes you're going to come across some illicit things. You know, if you're coming across someone who has 2000 fentanyl things, that's probably an illegal activity and maybe you've got to take action there. Right it's you're. You have to live with your conscience and do what's right for you, and then there's a duty to act. Right there's. I saw this. I don't know what you guys want to do with it. I don't want anything. I don't want anything more. I don't want to make a statement. Right, I just happened to see this.

Speaker 1:

We're good right and just slowly tiptoe out of that situation.

Speaker 2:

Or it could be that you there's a bunch of illegal activities going on, so then you have to decide how dangerous is it? Am I going to continue on? Is it a danger to my employees? For me, if I still had W-2s I would probably pull off of the job. If we came in and it was a whole production thing going on with illegal drugs Only for safety reasons. I mean they could be ambushed, I mean there's all kinds of Well there's other things that come along with that too.

Speaker 1:

It's just not that you know the production there is. It could be a chop shop, it could be. There's so many other illegal things that go along with that. And do you, is that the face and look you want for your business? You're just now, you're just taking on whoever, and a lot of people that are into illegal activities are kind of known in that area. So you know, use discretion whenever you take on those types of clients and just ask yourself, really, is this the look, is this a good look for my company? No, it's not, it's not. And you know, maybe maybe a referral to somebody that's legal, yeah, we'll take those on, but no, like I said, we come across guns there's a couple of times, especially in move out cleans. You know you're cleaning up around in a house and there's a whole couple of plates with straws on it and it's like oh, you know um.

Speaker 2:

we just take it and dispose of it, uh just remember to wear gloves when you're touching stuff like that. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Especially in move out cleans in any clean, cleans with any in any clean. You just don't know sometimes when you're up reaching up there what you're reaching on. Make sure you have your ladder so you can take a peek. Uh, sometimes there's needles, right, you don't want to get poked by a needle, so make sure that you're you're looking your job over really good, but some these people are very uh, sneaky and no, there's hiding places that they forget, you know, and when they move it's just like oh, I didn't know there was a kilo of cocaine still hidden up there.

Speaker 2:

Thank God, I haven't had that happen.

Speaker 2:

I have not, I have not but a couple of other things where we've had to call the police over like if they, because it's not a firearm, like if they, like it's um, it's called an um, abandoned firearm. So, unfortunately, once, once you get firearms into custody, so to speak, it's really hard to get those firearms back, and I'm only speaking from experience. My brother, for those of you who don't know, is passed away. He's gone um. But there was a police incident where he was trying to transport guns in the state of California, which is a big no-no. And even though I was the rightful owner of said guns, I never was able to recover the guns once they went into custody and what they wanted me to do was pay someone as a broker. I couldn't get my own guns back, even though I had receipts and I had to pay someone to get them back. And even after I did that, they still didn't want to give them back, even when I drove out there to go fetch them, because they had been guns that had been in my family, they were my dad's right. Oh no, I ended up losing. I just gave up on it and ended up losing it.

Speaker 2:

So you, just when you have a firearm and you're not a firearm state and you don't know what to do with a firearm, try to contact the homeowner or the real estate agent first and then, if you can't get ahold of them and the job is ending, you can always call the police and just don't clean that area and say, hey, there's a firearm in there, can you grab it? Cause you just don't know where the firearms been and I'm not saying that people did bad things with it, you just don't know right. Don't put yourself and implicate yourself on accident by handling the firearm. There's a protocol when you hand a fire over to a police officer, it could be considered an act of aggression. There's a whole can of worms you don't want to get yourself into and that just comes from firearm knowledge and being educated. So if you come across something like that, that's what you would do. Every state is a little bit different Arizona, we're we're all firearm friendly, it's everybody's got one.

Speaker 1:

So we live in the wild, wild west out here, so people walk around with those belts. We see them all the time too, with those belts. We see them all the time too, all the time. And it's just like there's that's a cowboy or cowgirl and it just. But this needs to be in your standard operating procedures as well. Make sure that you let your technicians know how to properly handle this type of situation, what to do whenever you see something illegal, so that they're not lost and that they're not anxiety ridden, but also get a feel for it whenever you are interviewing. That's a good question to be asking of how would you handle that situation?

Speaker 2:

If you had a move out cleaning that had a bunch of 2000 fentanyl pills, you wouldn't obviously touch it. You would have called the police and said, can you come get this for me please? And then they would. They would just go into that. They would get your license, cause that's what they do, is the first thing they ask, and you know this is what I do.

Speaker 1:

They very well may close down the job too, right you?

Speaker 2:

have to do an investigation. They would have to do, yeah, forensic thing. So, yeah, that's something to consider as well and obviously you can't really ding the individual. Hey, we had to come back because we found your drugs, so that's a gray area. Work that out amongst yourselves and, yeah, try to be conscientious because there are things that occasionally we run around that are illegal and then there's gray area that is not illegal. Just make sure that everyone is versed on what those items are and what the protocol is, like gloves, you know, not making sure that you touch something that could kill you. Um, you don't. There's been several instances on the news where the police officer went to frisk somebody and it rubbed through and touched their wrist, even though they're wearing gloves and the fentanyl had contact and they overdosed right there. Yes, it's, um, it's happened. It's a lot.

Speaker 2:

And these are young guys who run for a living right, these guys, these the young bucks. So just make sure that you are careful, because you don't want to hurt yourself or you have your crew get hurt. That would just be awful.

Speaker 1:

Right and you know, right now, right now, as we speak, I have a deep clean going and I had to walk this job. It was really close. But in their room it's a mother, an elderly mother, and a son. In his room there are, I want to say, probably 20 guns, and we're talking of all different sizes, and he goes um, maybe we can be careful. I said, no, we need to put those up. You're going to have to put those up whenever they come here.

Speaker 1:

I don't want them freaking out and saying, oh, we can just skip the room for now, yeah, or skip the whole room completely, but the best we can do is the other side, right?

Speaker 2:

A little gamer, so we're not going to buff out your guns.

Speaker 1:

No, no, we're not cleaning, taking the gun kit and cleaning it.

Speaker 2:

That could also be a specialty cleaning as well, but that's typically done by the homeowner.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, those are some of the things that you can run into. One time, way back in the day, I walked in with a real estate agent. It was a move out cleaning. It had been foreclosed on, the person had moved out and had sat empty for a while, but they kept the electricity on and someone had moved in and built a grow house. So he walked in and there wasn't just like one plant, there were hundreds of plants and they they have um meters now to tell if you're using more electricity than normal. Um, but for some reason or another, that was what underneath the radar and we, there must have been a thousand plants in this house and it was the. You could smell it when you walked in.

Speaker 1:

I was like oh yeah, it's in the walls.

Speaker 2:

Cause they're very fragrant. This, this cannabis plant, right? Yes, we walked into a grow house and subsequently we ended up not cleaning. We charged them a show up fee, obviously, but yeah, there you. You just never know what you're going to walk into.

Speaker 1:

I just wonder. That reminds me of the time, uh, where we you walked me through, um, a house that I had dirt with With. What are those those? Huh, was it a planter? Yeah, but, but the big ones anyways, there was two of them to where they had a grow house. It was in the house and it was two houses. It was in the house and it was two houses and we ended up charging like thirty five hundred dollars. You could never in a million years know that that was there.

Speaker 1:

They took it and rearranged everything. The homeowner had gotten mad because he lost the house. Eventually he became a hoarder and one of them had it was a grow house and a bunch of trimmer people there was there. But he came back and kicked out all the windows, um, he, he got foreclosed on and so, yeah, um, yeah, it was a little nerve wracking, but we took the job and we got it, and that is just another thing that you just kind of run into and Take it as do you want to take on those types of jobs you want to take on those types of jobs?

Speaker 2:

Right. It's very lucrative in the cannabis industry If you do offer that as a specialty cleaning. But please educate yourself on the do's and don'ts of certain protocols and what the certain things should be said and not said. You don't want to cause alarm that like I've never done this before. Please don't say that. That like I've never done this before.

Speaker 1:

Please don't say that, but you have done this a million times Like there's no I, oh, I've seen this a million times. And then you know, have your freak out moment outside in the car while you're driving over of course of course, and freak out.

Speaker 2:

It can be very lucrative if you happen to come across the opportunity. It's the only concern I have. Again, and I reiterate this and I'm on my soapboxes if you don't touch pills that you don't know what they are, because you can die from it. I cannot.

Speaker 1:

I'm laughing, but it's not funny, it's not uh that, these people that uh put fentanyl, they do it, they put it in and it looks so normal anymore and they do it to, to, I don't know I. It's just so sad to see what people have tried to do with this, right, I just anyways, um, back to. This is about finding stuff that is illegal in a house or wherever, and what you should do if you find it right yeah these are our recommendations.

Speaker 2:

Yes, this concludes our discussion on illegal and illicit drugs. If you have any questions, by all means please reach out. Thank you for joining us today and, oh, while I'm remembering, I'm still looking for haunted house cleanings. So if you have come into, if you currently clean a house that's haunted, or you have cleaned a house in the past that's haunted, I'd love to hear your story. Or if you've had an energy field walk through you, I want to hear all of the details so that you can be featured in our October haunted house cleaning stories. I look forward to your questions and thank you so much for tuning in. Bye.

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Jamie Runco

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Shannon Miller

Host