salvaged steps

Spring 2015

As you may recall, Levco deconstructed a few homes in Garden City, Idaho several months ago for NHS (Neighborhood Housing Services). During this project we did all sorts of cool things to keep materials out of the landfill and be good stewards of the community. As part of this project I made a statement that this fits perfectly with our company culture.

The last thing we did was salvage a set of metal trailer coach stairs. They were rusted out and had seen better days but recycling them just did not make sense to me.

I reminisced about stumbling down stairs while a paramedic in the city over a ten year period. Who wouldn’t want a great set of stairs to replace a cobbled together dangerous set. I decided at that moment I would have them repaired and donated.

Random act of kindness

I took the warn out metal stairs to a friend who immediately identified them as have been made well locally. He repaired them with tubular steel splices. Then I took them to Coatings Plus where they were sandblasted and powder coated jet black.

Repaired stairs

Once finished they looked like new, all I had to do was find a worthy recipient.

garden city police logo

It took a bit to figure out how to make this happen. My best and first thought was to get them to a worthy recipient in Garden City. I turned to the police department who felt that it was a great idea. I left a long message and didn’t hear back for awhile.

I got the call on a Saturday morning

“Joe Levitch, this is Ed Paoli with the Garden City Police Department” there was a long pause, imagining the worst I said “Yes this is me, what’s wrong?” “Nothing, I am headed out to find a worthy recipient of a new set of stairs for you.”  “Thanks,” I said and gave him some basic rules to follow:

1. It must be a personally owned coach
2. It must have a rickety set of dangerous stairs.
3. They needed to be appreciative of their good fortune.

I Got One!

Ben called back within the hour with a great situation. He had located a young man that happened to be at the right place at the right time. He met all the requirements crappy, dangerous, rickety stairs. He owns his own coach and he was appreciative of the noble gift and amazing luck.

I got there at about the same time and between us all we had the old steps out of the way and the new ones installed. With a handshake and feeling of tremendous satisfaction that I actually gave back to my community in a tangible selfless way. By harnessing my idea and following through with the assistance of others, we created a memorable useful tool. This truly is a random act of kindness.

As I left I said “Tag, your it, pass it on.”