Rick Mix of Willard’s Pest Control in Kirkland has never seen a bedbug infestation as bad as the one he encountered at a Kirkland town house.
“The kitchen cabinets, all the dishes and pots and pans had bedbugs in them,” Mix said. “The coffee maker, the microwave was full of them, the TV was full of them – just everything. Pictures on the walls … you’d take the picture frame off the wall and there would be an outline of bedbugs. It was horrible.”
Mix, along with nine of his employees from Willard’s Pest Control, spent the morning of Sept. 8, a Sunday, voluntarily throwing out furniture, appliances and other household products at a Kirkland woman’s Juanita town house.
They suited up in hazmat-like Tyvek suits, were given a large dumpster and got to work with the caveat they would be done in time for the morning’s Seahawks’ game.
It was all done for free.
Mix estimates at least $3,000 was easily put into this job, which isn’t finished yet.
“Sometimes it’s just good to do good things for people,” Mix said. “… I just like to think of my parents, they live back in Ohio, that if they needed something sometime, maybe someone would do something nice for them.”
Only a few hardwood tables and chairs could be salvaged.
Mix got a call in August from a woman named Kathy Finney with Miller Laine Properties, a real estate company in Bellevue that works with distressed properties.
Finney said her friend, the resident of the town house, was in the hospital, and state, county and city organizations didn’t have the money to fumigate the woman’s house.
“I was really pleased with how Willard’s stepped up to the plate and helped this lady so she wouldn’t end up on the street,” Finney said.
Finney said she was good friends with the woman’s mother and when her mother passed away, the woman inherited the town house.
One day in mid-August, Finney drove by the town house and saw a police car in front with several neighbors crowded around.
The resident, who is a senior, was disabled and police said they found her in her garage having not eaten for a number of weeks.
They also found the bedbug infestation and the woman was taken to EvergreenHealth Medical Center to be quarantined for a myriad of bedbug bites. She is also believed to have other medical issues.
Mix said bedbugs are so tiny they are able to fit inside the stitching on a box-spring mattress and when people lay down, the body heat and carbon dioxide alert the bugs it’s time to come out and feed.
“This poor woman had to have … I can’t begin to guess what she had feeding on her every night,” Mix said.
However, Finney says she is doing much better now.
“She just found herself in a situation where she didn’t know what to do,” Finney said, adding the woman was intelligent and is a University of Washington graduate. “I stepped up because people were taking advantage of her.”
Mix estimates the home slowly became infested with bedbugs throughout the course of a year and that many people don’t realize it until they’re fed on a lot because the bugs areso small.
“Bedbugs are through every strata of society. You can get these things anywhere,” he said. “Any place where there’s a group of people – college dorms are a big problem, hospitals, public housing, homeless shelters, condominium complexes, apartments.”
Finney said she believes the woman lost some money, but wouldn’t go into detail as she could not confirm her suspicions.
“Sometimes people get down and out and they can’t help it,” Finney said. “Who knows what goes on in somebody’s heart and mind.”
Finney said the woman is very appreciative of Willard’s Pest Control and that she continues to visit the woman so she doesn’t lose hope.
Finney is currently working with an investor to purchase the town house once pest control remediation is complete.
More information
For more information about Willard’s Pest Control, contact (425) 775-2320 or visit http://www.willardspestcontrol.com/.
