Mario Hernandez seems as your common small enterprise proprietor. He runs a small, family-run tile-care enterprise within the Coachella Valley of Southern California – and has been doing so for over 30 years.
However when he isn’t driving from one dwelling to the following restoring counters and flooring, he is been arising with options to a few of his group’s most urgent points, together with this yr’s pandemic.
“There’s a lot occurring on this world with politics (and) COVID,” Hernandez says. “I select to remain centered on my group.”
Through the 2007 financial crisis, Hernandez gathered collectively a gaggle of native small enterprise homeowners and nonprofits to assist one another and share sources. He and some different enterprise homeowners supplied free workplace house to companies of their group who might now not afford lease.
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A decade later, the group began by Hernandez, known as Desert United, has a database of over 4,000 enterprise individuals, and up till the pandemic held luncheons in Indian Wells, California, as soon as a month.
“It has been our technique to convey individuals collectively,” Hernandez says.
When COVID-19 started to unfold throughout the U.S., Hernandez learn the information in regards to the dire lack of personal protective equipment in hospitals and well being facilities. He leveraged his Desert United community, and arrange donation packing containers for gloves, masks and different gear at 4 House Depots round Palm Desert. Daily for over three months, he picked up a carload of PPE donations and delivered them to space hospitals, medical clinics and assisted residing facilities.
“Since I had all these sources, I needed to actually use that device to assist the group,” he says. Hernandez additionally arrange a number of blood drives.
By June, Hernandez wasn’t executed arising with concepts on methods to assist his group out.
A brand new firm through the pandemic
Because the pandemic continued to rage on, Hernandez had a brand new enterprise thought. A buddy he’d met by way of Desert United, Ginny Weissman, advised him of a product she heard about that was secure, non-toxic and will disinfect surfaces from the virus for as much as three months.
For Hernandez, the concept hit near dwelling. Lots of his shut members of the family and associates have been contracting the virus, together with his son, sister and two of his granddaughters. All have since recovered.
Hernandez supplied up his personal cash, and with Weissman, began Environment Protection Solutions, an organization which disinfects and sanitizes indoor areas, together with of COVID-19. The product they use is predicated off of 1 developed by Dow Corning in 1969, and has since been up to date, additional researched and examined. They are saying it is secure for pets and kids and is FDA permitted.
Hernandez’s staff has been employed to disinfect car-washes, eating places, retail shops and assisted residing facilities across the Coachella Valley. They’ve additionally supplied the service freed from cost to space non-profits together with Boys and Girls Clubs of the Coachella Valley and Hanson House, a residence for households of sufferers getting handled at close by hospitals.
“We go on the market like everybody else to take a danger [and] to attempt to assist others,” Hernandez says.
Hernandez and Weissman consider their service will probably be related even after the pandemic wanes. They are saying it may be used to disinfect in opposition to different viruses and micro organism just like the flu, salmonella, E-Coli, mould, and mildew.
Between the 2 companies Hernandez now runs, Hernandez says he works 10 to 14 hours a day.
He says he would not thoughts. “I like serving the general public and love what I do for a residing,” he says. “I am grateful to be working and grateful to be wholesome.”
