Falls Church Custodian Goes Above and Beyond for the School and Community
Wednesday, October 2, is National Custodian Appreciation Day. Thanks to our colleagues on the custodial team, we all have a clean, safe place to learn, teach, and work. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) employs more than 1,300 custodians, field custodians, and building supervisors to maintain our more than 28 million square feet of infrastructure.
One of our amazing custodial employees is Jaime Medina Yrhuay, custodian at Falls Church High School. Jaime was a pyramid winner last year for Outstanding School-Based Operational Employee.
Thomas Harlow Jr., adapted physical education teacher at Falls Church, first met Jaime in 2011, when he was a new custodian at Falls Church.
“When I first met him, he greeted me with a huge smile,” Thomas said in Jaime’s nomination for outstanding employee. “The same smile is still as bright and awesome 13 years later.”
“My dad always told me to shake a person's hand and you will find out if they are a hard worker. You can determine this by feeling the roughness of the person's hand and the power of their handshake,” Thomas said. “Jaime has the roughest hands I know.”
Several letters of support mentioned how hard-working Jaime is: often arriving to work early, volunteering to work outside in all kinds of weather, and “overall just finding ways to make our school look great,” Thomas said.
Bobby Krause, former director of student activities at Falls Church, said you can ask anyone who the hardest working person is, and “the unanimous answer will be Jaime.”
Bobby’s favorite memory of Jaime happened when they first started working together. Jaime asked him for a ride to pick up some flowers to plant in the school courtyard, and with the approval of their principal, they left campus. Bobby assumed they were heading for a nursery.
“We pulled up to a community member's house and Jaime pulled a bunch of flowers from their flower garden. I was mortified as I thought we were stealing flowers from people in the community,” Bobby said.
But Jaime’s work extended beyond the school and into the community. Jaime had helped them with landscaping, and the homeowner allowed him to transplant overgrown flowers. “This is obviously beyond the scope of the job for a custodian and shows how much Jaime cares about our school,” Bobby said.
“He tackles every task, no matter how challenging, with a happy heart and a desire to serve those around him and his school,” said Ben Nowak, principal of Falls Church. “Jaime greets everyone with a smile and brings positivity. I enjoy watching him interact with students at lunch as he cleans and prepares the cafeteria for the next group of students. I can tell the students care about Jaime just like we do.”
Thank you, Jaime, and all our custodial staff!
