Manhattan Media and 32BJ SEIU, the property service workers union—are pleased to present the third annual Building Service Workers of the Year Awards, honoring those workers who keep the city’s commercial, residential and other buildings running smoothly. This fall in a special section in our community newspapers, we will honor building service workers who go above and beyond to make
tenants’, residents’ and New Yorkers’ lives better.

These workers will be feted at an awards ceremony in October.

Building service workers in New York City residential and commercial buildings, public schools and other facilities, are eligible for these awards.

Categories include:
Residential Doorman/Woman East Side
Residential Doorman/Woman West Side
Residential Doorman/Woman Lower Manhattan
Brooklyn Residential Building Worker – Superintendent, doorperson or porter
Bronx Residential Building Worker – Superintendent, doorperson or porter
Queens Residential Building Worker – Superintendent, doorperson or porter
Manhattan Superintendent or Porter
Midtown Office Cleaner
Lower Manhattan Office Cleaner
Outer-Borough Office Cleaner
Theater/Event Cleaner
Security Officer – Commercial Office Building
Security Officer – University
Security Officer – Public or City Building
Public School Cleaner
Window Cleaner
Stadium Cleaner
Event Cleaner
Longevity Award (Commercial OR Residential)
Green Award
Life Saver Award

DEADLINE: Nominations are due Thursday, September 30, 2010

All fields are required. Your form will not work unless they are complete. Thanks.

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Bronx Residential Building Worker: Julio Sirui

Public School Cleaner: Walter McQueen

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“After four years of living in the building, I finally feel at home,” said resident Donna Clarke, who added that Sirui, “completely turned around the building.”

In addition to the building’s improved appearance, Sirui’s helpful disposition and ever-present smile have changed the atmosphere in the apartment complex. Clarke describes Sirui as the kind of person who is always happy, cheerful and willing to help, whether it’s by holding the door or helping with groceries.

Julio Sirui supports a family back in the Dominican Republic with his job as a porter at 6485 Broadway. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Sirui, 57, immigrated from the Dominican Republic three years ago to join his son Jose in New York City. Jose, 37, who is also a porter, facilitated both the financial logistics and details of the immigration process that reunited him with his father after several years of being apart. When his father arrived in the city, Jose recommended him for a porter position in the building. Jose also serves as a translator for his father, who prefers to communicate in Spanish. Sirui is a good man with a strong work ethic, Jose said, and that’s a large part of why his father is so good at his job.

Clarke said that one of her fondest memories of Sirui is also one of the funniest. When the hot water went out in her apartment due to a problem with the building’s boiler, it was Sirui she turned to for help. Despite the language barrier, Clarke said they found their own way to communicate by her acting out the dilemma and miming trying to shower and wash her hair with freezing water. After they both had a good laugh at her antics, Sirui quickly got the hot water running again and Clarke was able to avoid being late to work.

When he is not working, Sirui enjoys staying connected with his Latin roots through Spanish television and music, especially merengue.

He supports his wife, Sara, and their four children—Welkin, Juana, Jeraldina and Jafrelfi—who remain in the Dominican Republic. He hopes that one day, he will be able to reunite the entire family in New York.

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“I watched him go to work every day, all the way to Jersey from Brooklyn,” Watson said of his father. “He would leave at 6 in the morning and not get back until 9 or 10 o’clock at night. My grandfather was the same way, and I just don’t know any other way.”

Emanuel Watson says the busier he is, the better he feels. Photo by Karl Crutchfield

Watson credits this third-generation work ethic for his own success as a porter at 1407 Linden Blvd., in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

“It’s just something that’s in me,” he said. “I enjoy working, and the busier I am, the better I feel.”

Wanting to try something new, Watson made the transition from security guard to porter when he came to the building 10 years ago. He spent the 18 years prior working as a security guard for Gabriel Towers condominiums. Rather than leave the his union when they stopped representing security guards, Watson asked them to recommend him to a new position, which is how he ended up at his present building.

A native New Yorker and longtime Brooklyn resident, Watson said he is proud of his community roots and all Brooklyn building workers. When he has a chance to get away, he takes his small boat out on local waterways to fish; Jamaica Bay is one of his favorite spots.

Watson strives to make sure the building’s appearance reflects the pride he takes in his work. Andrea Plummer, who administers payroll for the building and conducts inspections, actually knew Watson’s work before she met the man behind it. When she first began making building inspections, she remembers being particularly impressed by the appearance of certain floors; she inquired and found out that Watson was responsible for their maintenance. She says that because he has such high expectations for himself, as well as his fellow employees, there is a marked difference in the condition of the building.

At one point, a co-worker was let go and Watson was the only porter in the building. But Plummer never heard a complaint out of Watson; he simply stepped up and took care of the entire building himself, she remembered.

Hard work is also important because Watson wants to be a good provider for his family, the same way his father was for him. He has four children—Daneka, Darius, Devan and Rai-Vaughn—and is excited to become a grandfather; his eldest, Daneka, and her husband are expecting their first child, a boy.

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One of the best aspects of her job, she says, is watching the residents grow from children to adults who get married and start families of their own. Residents and fellow employees have witnessed her life milestones as well. Two years ago, doctors diagnosed French with uterine cancer, requiring her to undergo surgical treatments and spend time in the hospital. She said her building family was with her through it all.

Sharon French watches over the other doormen and hangs candy canes on the lobby Christmas tree for children. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“I could have opened a florist shop with all the flowers I received,” she said. “It was really sweet to know that I was missed, thought about and that they were looking forward to me coming back. A lot of the tenants came to hospital to visit me. They were so nice and supportive.”

With her cancer in remission, French is back to the job she loves, on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. One of the friends she has made over the years is fellow employee Jose Barquet, the building handyman, who has known French since she worked at the Army-Navy store around the corner from the building. He credits her popularity to the kindness and professionalism that define French’s work.

Being the only doorwoman on her building’s 17-person staff does not bother French. Nearly two decades ago, when then-building superintendent Augustine Barquet brought her on board, she remembers asking him why he was hiring a woman for a position predominantly held by men. Barquet told French that there’s a special personal touch and feeling of home with a doorwoman behind the front desk. French agrees.

“Being the only female there, I have to look out for them the only way a woman would, by being a nurturer in the building,” she said.

That includes keeping tabs on the other doormen she works with and hanging candy canes on the lobby Christmas tree because she knows how much the children enjoy them.

A single mother, French and her two sons—Christopher, 16, and foster son Jonathan, 15, who joined her family almost a year ago—live in Harlem. Her boys, who are best friends and juniors at NEST+M high school, keep her busy. The family enjoys taking in sporting events like basketball and baseball, watching movies and having family barbecues and picnics. Now that high school is almost over, French is in the thick of helping her sons prepare for college—yet another milestone she plans to share with her extended building family.

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“There’s comedians who say, ‘You sound like your parents,’” he said. “Well, I certainly do.”

Aristovulos is a superintendent at an apartment building on Greenwich Avenue in the Village, where he’s worked since 1991. The self-described tree hugger says that he learned his first lesson in conservation when he was just a kid. His mother, a nurse who emigrated from Greece when he was 7 years old, saved on the cost of heating bills by keeping the temperature low.

By turning down the heat down at night, Bill Aristovulos saves his building between $10,000 and $15,000 every year. Photo by Karl Crutchfield

“I would say I was cold, and she would say, ‘Put a sweater on,’” said Aristovulos while sitting in his building’s workout room. The black matting on the floor is his design—soft pieces of rubber that interlock to make a whole, like an oversized puzzle. Tires salvaged from landfills were melted down to form the material.

Today, Aristovulos is 60 and the father of two grown children. And like his mother, he has found creative ways to help the environment. As a superintendent, one of his first priorities was to turn down the heat in the building at night. The move not only saves between $10,000 and $15,000 every year, he estimates, but also significantly reduces the building’s carbon footprint.

Another step he took was to install low-flow toilets, long before the idea took hold in the city. More recently, he installed motion detectors for lights in the building’s garage to save on electrical costs.

“We’re in trouble,” Aristovulos said about the current state of the environment. “We’re truly in trouble, and we’ve got to start thinking about what to do. One of the things we can try is good old-fashioned conservation, like my mother taught me as a kid.”

But 40 hours a week as a superintendent isn’t enough for Aristovulos, who wants to share conservation techniques with as many people as possible. He teaches night courses for the Building Performance Institute, helping other workers make older buildings more environmentally friendly. He also helped develop the curriculum for, and now takes part in, the city’s “1000 Green Superintendents” training program.

It’s that type of motivation that impressed Nick Prigo, a fellow union member.

“The green building classes that he teaches for the training fund are helping our city save energy, reduce costs and clean our environment,” Prigo said.

Aristovulos says that while he never imagined himself an educator, he feels a deep sense of fulfillment when he shares these tips for green maintenance.

“I’m happy teaching. I’m happy being a superintendent. I walk with pride,” he said. “This is my building.”

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Ten seconds. That’s how long it took Kelsor to drop to the ground, grab a 250-pound man who had fallen onto the subway tracks at the Christopher Street PATH station and bring him safely back to the ledge.

“I counted 10 seconds in my head as I pulled this man up. Immediately after, the train went by,” said Kelsor, 54.

Since rescuing a man from the PATH tracks, Terrence Kelsor has gotten a permanent position and a raise from his company, FJC Security Services. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Kelsor, an employee of FJC Security Services, had only been on duty at the PATH station for four months when the incident occurred in early March. Security guards protect PATH stations when Port Authority officials are off duty. Under normal conditions, Kelsor would have radioed police for assistance. But in this case, there was no time to do that: the train would have run over the man before cops could reach the scene.

Kelsor, a longtime Newark, N.J. resident and married father of three, has received various awards and accolades since then, including the key to the city from Mayor Cory Booker. He’s also gotten a permanent position and a raise from his company. But it should come as no surprise that Kelsor, who’s also a Gospel musician, credits a higher power for the positive outcome of the situation.

“I didn’t panic. I was in control. My first thought was, ‘I have to save this man,’” he said. “It was like God just took complete control. He gave me the strength to pull this man off the tracks.”

Drama on the job is nothing new for Kelsor, whose quick thinking has helped others before. Near the beginning of his career in 1985, he was on patrol one night and found a woman who seemed disoriented walking along the side of the road. She had been raped. Kelsor immediately called police and assisted the woman until she could be taken to a hospital. The perpetrator of the crime was later apprehended. Kelsor received an award for his actions from FactFinders, a detective agency.

The memory of what happened that March night in the PATH station, though, stays strongly in his mind. The man he saved, who was heavily intoxicated that night, hasn’t contacted him since. But Kelsor still thinks about him, and says he sometimes goes to the Christopher Street station to reflect on what happened.

“It’s still fresh in my mind. I really didn’t consider myself a hero,” he said. “I just wanted to save a man’s life because I knew what was at stake.”

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“I love it,” he said, “as soon as I see it.”

For 29 years, he has worked as a doorman at 120 E. 36th St. It’s not Park Avenue—although it’s between Park and Lexington—but it might as well be.

“We’re not a Park Avenue building,” said Ann Marie Coleman, the co-op board’s vice president. “But he treats each one of us like we’re millionaires.”

Plinio Torres, who has two grown children of his own, is a favorite among the building’s kids. Photo by Karl Crutchfield

The 62-year-old doorman lives with his wife—“my companion of 17 years”—in The Bronx. Together, they enjoy baseball and Bachata music. Torres has “two beautiful children” ages 37 and 41. One daughter lives in Colorado. The other lives with her husband in Long Island and runs a daycare center. The East Coast daughter has two children: a 4-month-old and an 18-month-old.

Torres usually leaves home around 8 in the morning and arrives plenty early for the beginning of his 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift, so as never to be late.

“He’s as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar,” said resident Jeffrey Zwipft, adding, “Anything you ask him to do, if it’s within the realm of his possibility, he will do.”

Take the mailbox problem. The mailboxes, built in the 1950s, are too small for all the magazines, newspapers and political flyers that come pouring in. But Torres found a solution. He puts a rubber band around each packet of sorted mail and delivers it by hand to each resident’s door after his work shift ends.

“On his own time,” Zwipft emphasized.

“These people are very good,” Torres said, of his home away from home. Although the job is routine, working in the city exposes him to other interesting worlds.

“I like to come, even sometimes I leave [home] early,” he said. “I like the people, they are very nice to me, very professional. That’s the reason I like it here.”

He is a favorite among the building’s children. According to Coleman, a board member’s 6-year-old daughter said she never wanted to leave the building, “because I’m not going to leave Plinio.”

“He is helpful without being asked,” Coleman said. “He knows everything that needs knowing. He has made something of the job that is bigger than the job itself. He is the eyes, the ears and the heart of the building.”

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On paper, Daniel Fernandez’s job is simple to the point of mundane: he cleans and moves furniture for events under the auspices of Collins Building Services, Inc. Specifically, he helps maintain the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo. Yet in just two years, he has demonstrated a wider ideal of community and hospitality.

Daniel Fernandez cares for the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“First thing I do at seven in the morning is set up the second floor for services in the Bronfman Center,” he said. He proceeds floor-by-floor, “cleaning and setting up and organizing everything.” He does the same at Lillian Vernon (a five-story building) and Casa Italiana (four stories), all before lunch. After lunch he does it again, backwards.

“I love it,” he said. “My days go fast.”

Co-workers say he goes far beyond his job description, however. His arrival, “created a culture shift immediately,” said David Rittberg, the Bronfman Center’s director. “He is simply the most committed worker we have. The quality of the state of the building is key.” The energy Fernandez brings “trickles down to me, the rest of the staff, students, funders and philanthropists who care about this building.”

The Greenwich Village buildings are some of the loveliest in New York. Lillian Vernon is a townhouse built in 1836, remodeled by Stanford White. Luminaries like Jonathan Safran Foer and Jonathan Lethem are current writers-in-residence. The busy Bronfman Center has Tiffany windows and intricate teak carvings. The 19th-century Casa Italiana holds lectures, art exhibits and concerts. In all three, rooms may need set-up and clean-up several times a day.

An avid Yankees fan who lives in The Bronx with his fiancée and her young son, Fernandez has always kept a busy schedule. He has worked since he was 15 years old, first with his father at the World Trade Center, then in other custodial jobs.

“Every summer and on vacation I worked hard and I never stopped,” he said.

His mom, a school bus aide, taught him to be polite and respect others, a trait much remarked upon by co-workers.

“He is a virtuous sort of person,” said Adam Soldofsky, the administrative secretary at Lillian Vernon. “He takes a lot of pride in doing his job well. What he seems to value with this job are interactions.”

“I like showing them I care by asking questions,” Fernandez said. “I love to ask questions. If you don’t ask, you don’t know.”

He also likes to solve problems. At the Bronfman Center, it is the director’s job to foster staff harmony, but it was Fernandez, according to Rittberg, who pulled off one of the best team-building exercises ever.

“On his own time he built a flower box and he brought soil,” Rittberg said. “We all got together and did [flower] planting and it was all a ‘Danny thing’. It was his actions that led to an amazing team-building experience.”

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An assistant superintendent and handyman for the Eastmore, on East 76th Street, Pichardo has made a career of isolating and fixing problems.

“My dad was very technical. I watched him and it grew in me,” he said during an interview in the marble-floored lobby.

An assistant superintendent and the only handyman at the Eastmore, Juan Pichardo has probably worked in all 293 units. Photo by Janet Lawrence

Pichardo is married and lives in Woodhaven, Queens, with two kids of his own—Nicole, 17, and Juan, Jr., 11. He’s worked at the Eastmore since 2001, but he arrived with nearly two decades of building management and repair experience. He’s earned dozens of job-related certifications, including an FDNY boiler license and an air pollution control certification from the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I love working with tools, with my hands, and doing electrical and plumbing work,” he said.

His extensive knowledge does not go unnoticed. As the only handyman for the Eastmore’s 293 units, nearly all residents have seen him in action. Margaret Bitsky, who’s lived in the building for more than 40 years, said that Pichardo has worked on everything in her apartment, from leaky kitchen sinks and bathroom plumbing to electrical projects.

“He’s a good handyman, anything he fixes, he fixes the right way,” she said.

When resident Edward Nyitray’s kitchen exhaust fan broke recently, Pichardo installed a new motor on the same day.

“He realized it was important to us,” Nyitray said. “He’s efficient, there’s no delay in terms of repairs we need in the house, he’s right there. He’s knowledgeable about everything in the building.”

Pichardo, of course, just seems to feel like it’s part of his job.

“They break it, I fix it,” he said with a good-natured grin.

Skill isn’t the only reason Pichardo is so well liked among residents. Throughout the building, the handyman is known for his quick smile and friendly attitude. Bitsky summed it up, saying, “He’s lovable.”

On a recent fall day, resident Erica Copulsky greeted Pichardo with a pat on the back and they chatted like old friends about a troublesome light fixture in her apartment.

Pichardo credits all the staff for the building’s successful maintenance, from “the doormen to the porters. And, of course, resident manager Moises Guimet. We work as a team here, we work as a family practically,” he said.

But Pichardo’s early love of problem solving is what keeps him coming back for more.

“Every day is a different challenge,” he said. “You never know what to expect. And I love a challenge.”

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