While many of Buddy Hawkins’ friends were retiring, he was starting a new business.

A well-known figure in RGV construction circles for 37 years, Hawkins had seen his construction business wither away in the 2008 recession. Then he received a call from a ServiceMaster Clean corporate recruiter.  Given the opportunity to buy a franchise which would clean up and restore homes and commercial buildings struck by fires, floods, storms and other disasters, Hawkins, initially lukewarm, decided to take the bait.  Two years later, he won the ServiceMaster Corporate Rookie Franchise of the Year Award when he was 67 years old.

In his first full year of business, his franchise was the fastest growing new franchise among the company’s 4,000 franchises.  “It’s been quite a ride, with twists and turns I would never have expected,” he said.

Hawkins graduated from Harlingen High School, won an academic scholarship to Rice University, and with a degree in electrical engineering worked in the defense industry. He became the project engineer designing the trigger for the detonation radar used in the Poseidon Class submarine missiles. Yet Hawkins was a blue collar guy at heart. Back home in the Valley on a break, he built a spec house on the Island. People who saw his work asked him to build for them, too, and over time he expanded into condos, commercial and medical buildings, and warehouses.

Then came the recession and months of boredom and frustration. “My experience, my expertise, my connections, my reputation — everything about me was associated with construction, and I couldn’t see that industry coming back for years,” Hawkins said.  But the morning after the sale of his commercial building, ServiceMaster called. “I told my wife that all of this was too much of a coincidence to be just a coincidence. God works in His own ways, and I saw His hand planning my future. Even so, I looked down my nose at first, thinking that nothing about this industry could be interesting, much less exciting. Boy was I wrong!”

After a month of training in Memphis, Hawkins started with two employees and an old warehouse. “Very few things in the disaster restoration business are difficult to master, but the simultaneous grasp of dozens of moving parts involved in making it a success is mind-boggling. I think that what I do now is more difficult than what I did when I was an engineer.” Eighty percent of the disasters he handles are boilerplate, where standard operating procedures produce a predictable resolution. The other twenty percent involves skunks, bees, sewage back-ups, sprinkler system failures, computer fires, hailstorms, etc.

Hawkins’ construction experience has proved invaluable. “I know the materials, the techniques and the trades that were necessary to put something together. When it is damaged, I know exactly what needs to be done to restore it to its original condition.” Typically Hawkins’ crews are in and out of an insurance loss in three to five days.  They do the mitigation, “cleaning up what can be saved and throwing away what can’t.” Hawkins has established contractual relationships with over a dozen national insurance companies and is expanding his network every month.

To read more of this story by Eileen Mattei, pick up a copy of the April edition of Valley Business Report, on news stands now, or visit the “Current & Past Issues” tab on this Web site.