Veteran carpet cleaner Marsha Reynolds was looking forward to traveling to San Diego to volunteer her services along with other industry professionals at the Ronald McDonald House.
“My granddaughter is physically challenged,” she said. “Anything we can do to help children, I’m backing one hundred percent. This was just one of my ways of giving back, and I would help children, too.”
But the event, planned for January, was canceled because of COVID-19 restrictions that required participants to be vaccinated.
“I’m not going in there and get jabbed just to volunteer,” Reynolds told The Epoch Times. “It’s kind of discrimination to say, ‘You can’t clean for us because you won’t take a vaccine.’ It really upsets me when they discriminate.”
Reynolds, who lives in Fresno, founded the Mr. Fresno Carpet Cleaning business 25 years ago. She is among some 120 carpet cleaners who were planning to volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House on Jan. 21 until the COVID-vaccine rule was imposed.
“I’ve never declined a customer because they won’t take a vaccine,” Reynolds said. “Why should you tell me if I’m volunteering my day to help you? My body, my choice.”
Previously, it was acceptable for carpet cleaners to volunteer with proof of a negative nasal COVID-19 and while wearing masks, according to Michael Pailliotet, who organized a volunteer cleaning event at the Ronald McDonald House of San Diego two years ago.
“Six or seven weeks ago, they said the rules changed and now everybody has to be vaxxed and triple boosted,” he told The Epoch Times. “I called it off because I’m not getting the vaccine and I’m certainly not getting triple boosted. Most of the carpet cleaning industry, about 90 percent of us, have not bought into the COVID hype.”
Some 368 Ronald McDonald Houses in 64 countries provide lodgings for the families of children who are suffering from an illness like cancer or leukemia and are being treated at local hospitals.
The Ronald McDonald House of San Diego, located on Children’s Way, across the street from the Rady Children’s Hospital, leases its building from the hospital.
“They said the grounds they are on are governed by the hospital and that it’s not their rule,” Pailliotet said. “Most Ronald McDonald Houses are attached to a hospital, so they have to play by the hospital’s rules.”
Ronald McDonald House of San Diego CEO Chuck Day did not respond to requests for comment but a spokesperson for Rady Children’s Hospital said the nearby Ronald McDonald House is a separate organization.
“We don’t operate Ronald McDonald House,” said Carlos F. Delgado, senior media relations and public information officer at the hospital. “That is its own entity. They just happen to lease a building we own.”
Delgado added that although the hospital requires its staff, vendors, and volunteers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, it doesn’t dictate the rules and regulations at Ronald McDonald House of San Diego.
“We are dealing with some fragile children, cancer kids, premature babies, and the last thing we need is for a child to get sick because someone wasn’t vaccinated,” Delgado told The Epoch Times. “That’s the hospital-wide policy we have.”
Pailliotet has operated his business, Connoisseur Carpet Tile, and Upholstery Cleaning, for 37 years in Santa Cruz, California, and Gardnerville, Nevada.
Other Ronald McDonald Houses that he’s booked for industry volunteering events are in Phoenix, Arizona; Greenville, South Carolina, Boise, Idaho; St. Petersburg, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee.
Like Reynolds, Pailliotet had been looking forward to the San Diego event, but he wasn’t surprised by the rule change because Las Vegas and Phoenix houses also added COVID vaccine restrictions.
“I’ve been putting on these events for quite a few years where we go around the country and clean different Ronald McDonald Houses,” Pailliotet said. “It’s a win-win for everybody but every house is governed very differently. We cleaned a Ronald McDonald House in Boise in July. They were very loose and liberal about it.”
Media relations staff at the corporate headquarters of Ronald McDonald House did not respond to requests for comment.
“I love the organization and I understand they have to play by the rules,” Pailliotet said. “They’ve got families and kids and dire health situations.”
He is hopeful, however, that COVID-19 vaccine requirements will be lifted in the future.
“Most houses are cleaned by volunteer staff that come in and mop the floors and do the best they can,” Pailliotet added. “Sometimes, they have to hire professionals, but the Ronald McDonald Houses have been adopted by the carpet cleaning industry for decades. I didn’t invent this by any means. I just made it bigger.”
