Service people recount odd experiences on assignment

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 8:52 a.m.

Utility service people are vital to the smooth operation of any city.

They are the front-line soldiers of the telephone, water, gas and electric companies -- men and women who work outside in blistering heat, freezing cold, pounding wind and driving rain.

While most utility employees are people the public rarely see, the soldiers are the ones out there on the streets and in the yards and homes of customers.

Generally, encounters between the service people and the public are routine events.

But there are exceptions.

A few Las Vegas Valley meter readers, repair people, installers and trouble- shooters recently shared some of the experiences they have had while trying to do their jobs.

Some say they have been shot at, assaulted, robbed and verbally abused. Many have been bitten by dogs and stung by bees. One was chased by seals.

In the course of a work day they have stumbled into drug deals, over murder victims and upon people engaging in sex.

Sprint telephone cable repairman Keith Owen has had more than his share of strange experiences during his 20 years with the company, such as the time a customer accused him of traumatizing her dog.

"I'm in the backyard standing next to a (chain-link) fence and my partner is in the front yard and we're yelling back and forth," Owen said. "This (German) shepherd right next to me, on the other side of the fence, kept barking and barking. I mean it was like right there and I couldn't hear myself think.

"This lady (the dog's owner) was standing there watching. Finally, I say to the dog, 'Just shut up and go over there and lay down.' Well, it went over and laid down and started to kind of crying. The lady started screaming at me for yelling at her dog.

"We went about our business and toward the end of the day my supervisor calls me and says the lady called up and wanted the company to pay for a doggie psychiatrist."

It didn't happen.

Owen also has been bitten on the rear by a Chihuahua.

"I dropped my needle-nose pliers and when I bent over, the Chihuahua ran around and bit me," Owen said. "It always seems to be the small ones that are the most aggressive."

He has seen nude sunbathers, a common occurrence with service people who routinely enter backyards.

"I went up the pole and half-way up I saw this lady in the yard next door laying out in the nude," he said. "I came back down real fast and screamed, 'Telephone man going up the pole,' and the next thing I heard was a door slamming."

Owen once stared down the barrel of a gun.

"I was in a yard in a trailer park and these two teenagers, 14 or 15, started walking up to me and asking directions. A (chain-link) fence was between me and them. When they got right up to me one pulled a gun and stuck it between my eyes and the other one said, 'Give me your money.' I gave him my wallet, but I only had $9.

"One of the guys said, 'Is that all you got? Let's just shoot him,' and then all of a sudden they dropped the wallet and took off running. I looked around and a lady had come up behind me with a shotgun. She had two Rottweilers and sicced the dogs on them."

Once, a monkey joined Owen on a job.

"I went in a backyard one day and went up a pole to work on the line," he said. "I looked over, and there was a monkey. This guy had a monkey with a long leash on it. It was just enough for it to get around his backyard, up the pole and down the line.

"He watched everything I did. Everywhere I went, he was right there."

Power to the people

Nevada Power Company service people also feel, at times, as if they may have stepped into the "Twilight Zone."

Supervisor Tish Sullivan said when she was a lead meter reader one of her crew members went into a back yard and was chased out by two barking seals.

But dogs are the biggest problem that face most service people.

"I was bitten three times in four years," Sullivan said. "One person lost part of an arm to a pit bull."

Last year meter readers found the bodies of two people who died of heart attacks.

"The meter reader went up to the side of a house and found water flooding everywhere," Sullivan said. "He opened the gate to the back yard and found the body of an elderly woman who had collapsed after turning the hose on. She probably had been dead since the evening before."

A few days later the body of an elderly man was found after collapsing in front of his garage.

Water woes

Steve Lujan, with the Las Vegas Valley Water District, once stepped into the middle of a drug deal at an apartment complex. The four dealers stood between him and the meter he had to read.

"I said, 'Excuse me,' and walked through them, read the meter and walked back through them," he said, "and took off running."

Water-meter readers never know what surprise awaits them when they lift the lid that covers the meters, which are in the ground. The holes become a repository for almost anything imaginable -- syringes, drugs and even human feces.

"The things that come up most often are the bugs -- spiders, cockroaches, creepy-crawlies," Steve Lujan said. "Once I was kneeling down and a fly bit me. I looked down and there were cockroaches all over my leg."

Joe McGee found a meter box full of bees, possibly the killer variety.

"My partner saw the (honey) comb just before I slid the lid back," McGee said. "When I broke the lid, that's when they came out. We jumped into the truck, and they were attacking it. You could hear them hitting the windows."

McGee has seen things he never expected to see.

"I go through this one alley to start my route and one day I happened to walk up on these two people who were having sex," he said. "They were right by my meter ... I walked around them, read it and left."

And almost two years ago a meter reader discovered the body of a man who had been shot in the head.

Pat Doddridge has been a meter reader for two years. Her daughter, Tiffany, has been one for five weeks.

One morning two weeks ago they happened to be working together, walking to a meter, when a man propositioned them for sex. That incident was not as traumatic as an incident that happened to another female meter reader who was walking down the street when a car came to a screeching halt. The male driver jumped out, pointed a gun at her and fondled himself before jumping back into the car and driving away.

The next day the meter reader applied for a transfer.

It's a gas

Angelo Bancheri, who has worked for Southwest Gas more than 20 years, has found cats, hamsters and all varieties of other animals in gas appliances he services.

He was criticized by one customer who said she had waited an entire day for him to check out her stove.

"I picked up the top of the range, and you can feel the grease dripping into your hands," he said. "I'm thinking, 'While you were waiting all this time, why didn't you clean the range?' "

Cockroach infestations are common, especially in the older part of town.

"You lift up the range hood and you can see all this brown moving," he said.

Bancheri said that because Las Vegas has a lot of showgirls, it is not uncommon for service people to be greeted by scantily clad women.

"You knock on the door, they say just a minute and then when they open the door they are basically wearing something you can see through," he said. "It's second nature to them. It doesn't make any difference."

Sometimes, elderly people falsely report a gas leak.

"Especially around the holidays," Bancheri said. "They're by themselves and will call in a gas leak just to have someone to visit with. Our hearts go out to them. We try to be compassionate, we try to help them out, but we have a job to do and have to move on."

Gas thefts are sometimes a problem.

"Once, somebody called up about a gas leak and the customer was on vacation," Bancheri said. "There was a meth (methamphetamine) lab in the house next door, but the meter had been removed from that residence because they didn't pay their bill. So the people ran a hose from the house of the neighbors who were on vacation into the lab."

Illegal drug manufacturers are not the only scofflaws gas people must deal with.

"People use garden hoses, PVC pipes, rubber surgical tubing -- you name it and people have used it to by-pass gas meters," Marvin Claiborne said.

Claiborne said people have stopped him at the oddest times to ask questions, including late one evening on the freeway by a highway patrol trooper who was having a problem with the heater in his residence.

Once Claiborne was on the roof of an apartment complex working on a furnace when his ladder suddenly fell down.

"There was no wind. It was a beautiful day," he said. "I looked down and there were some teens on the ground. They said, 'Drop your wallet and we'll put the ladder back up.'

"I pulled my cell phone out and said, 'You know what? Stick around just a minute and you can discuss that with Metro.' "

The teenagers ran away and he called his dispatcher to send someone out to pick up the ladder.

One of Claiborne's most frightening experiences involved a snake.

"I was in a home working on a furnace at the end of a hallway," he said. "It was dark, the light in the hall wasn't working. I had a flashlight in my mouth when I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye.

"An open bedroom door was right there. What I saw was a snake about six inches in diameter and 18 feet long. There was a sheet of Plexiglass covering the doorway. Inside the bedroom was the snake's habitat -- tree branches, rocks, everything. This snake was huge. There was just enough light in the room so that I could see it moving."

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