Janitor

A group of youths sneaked into Wilde Lake High School on Sunday and set off fire extinguishers before one of the youths pulled a knife on a janitor, police said.Police said the youths entered the school about 5: 30 p.m. through an unlocked door and were confronted by the janitor.One pulled a knife and another threw a bike on the janitor's car before the youths fled, police said.Pub Date: 7/14/98

An article in the April 12, 1913, edition of The Argus reported on the surprising culprit after a church's interior was found damaged. What was at first supposed to be the work of vandals, bent on spite-work, at the Catonsville Presbyterian Church last week, when some of the carpet was ripped up and torn, the wires of a stereopticon machine cut and the doors badly mutilated, proved to be the work of a stray dog which was imprisoned in...

A 45-year-old former janitor at Parkville Middle School pleaded guilty yesterday to second-degree rape for his sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl, a former student at the school where the two were discovered by police last March in the pre-dawn hours.Richard Gray, who was head custodian at the time of his arrest, pleaded guilty to the one rape charge after Assistant State's Attorney John Cox agreed to drop 11 other charges of attempted rape, assault and burglary.Gray's arrest last year -- when a police dog found the girl hiding under a blanket in his custodian's office at 3 a.m. -- caused embarrassment and guilt for education officials and teachers at the northeast Baltimore County school.

After weeks of negotiations and a protest downtown, the union representing about 700 Baltimore janitors has approved a new contract granting 4 percent annual pay raises. Union members passed the agreement unanimously, spokeswoman Julie Karant said in an email Monday. The office cleaners, members of the Service Employees International Union, had been negotiating a new contract since Sept. 8 with representatives from major commercial cleaning companies in the region. They had threatened a strike if their demands for higher pay were not met by mid-October.

Oscar J. Russell, a longtime Baltimore city schools janitor and engineer who had 10 children, 43 grandchildren, 51 great-grandchildren and 25 great-great-grandchildren, died Nov. 1 of heart failure at a nursing home in Silver Spring. He was 87. Born, raised and schooled in West Baltimore, Mr. Russell grew up an only child. He married three times. After the death of his first wife, Irene, Mr. Russell married the former Hazel Dorsey, who died in 1984. He met his third wife, Addie, through his daughter Debra Caldwell of Baltimore.

Attention, Kmart shoppers: "Come out with your hands up."That was the message last night for two youthful thieves whose after-hours plan to steal a cartload of shotguns and rifles from an East Baltimore Kmart fizzled when they were discovered by a janitor.The two 15-year-olds, residents of the Hollander Ridge apartments, hid inside the Kmart store in the Parkside Shopping Center in the 5100 block of Sinclair Lane when it closed at 8 p.m., according to city police spokesman Sam Ringgold, who gave this account:Dressed in dark clothes, the two left a storeroom and loaded rifles, shotguns and ammunition from the sporting goods department into a shopping cart.

A former Meade Senior High School custodian will likely be sentenced to probation next month after he pleaded guilty in Anne Arundel Circuit Court this week to having sex with a 15-year-old student in the school's auditorium.Mortimer M. Peters, 37, of the 400 block of Starwood Drive in Glen Burnie admitted to Judge Eugene M. Lerner that he had sex with the girl Feb. 20.The encounter was consensual, according to prosecutors, but is considered a third-degree sex offense because the girl was under age 16 and Peters was more than four years older than the girl.

George S. Rice Sr., who rose from a janitor to become a United States Fidelity & Guaranty executive, died Oct. 6 of cancer at a Palm Bay, Fla., hospice. He was 76. Mr. Rice, the son of a merchant seaman and a homemaker, was born one of 10 in Baltimore, and raised in Westport. He dropped out of parochial school and enlisted in the Air Force in 1951, where he served with the Air Force Security Police in Europe and earned his General Education Development diploma. Mr. Rice was discharged in 1954 and the next year began working as a janitor at USF&G's old Calvert Street office.

South Shore Elementary School in Crownsville -- an $8.2 million school that opened yesterday with features including a carpeted gym, a computerized alarm system, even an office for the janitor -- is like no other school in the county.In the 1300 block of Fairfield Loop Road, it's the first new school to open this fall. The county's other new school, the $10 million Meade Heights Elementary, has been stalled by construction errors and cannot open until Sept. 17.The old South Shore Elementary, built in 1957, was so badly in need of renovations that administrators decided it was cheaper to start from scratch.

A 77-year-old janitor accused of fatally shooting a teen-ager in a crime that has resparked a debate about children and harassment of the elderly sat silent yesterday as a Baltimore District Court judge ordered him jailed until his trial.The no-bail order came hours after police had reattached the door to the suspect's two-story rowhouse and investigated a broken window on his 1984 Cadillac DeVille -- vandalism that occurred in the wake of his arrest.Albert Sims, wearing a standard prison-issue bright yellow jumpsuit, appeared fatigued during the five-minute hearing, held via a video hook-up between the courtroom and the Central Booking and Intake Center, where he is being held.

A bargaining committee late Sunday struck an agreement that would give 4 percent annual raises to 700 Baltimore janitors after the office cleaners held a protest in downtown Baltimore earlier this month. The office cleaners, members of the Service Employees International Union, had been negotiating a new contract since Sept. 8 with representatives from major commercial cleaning companies in the region. They had threatened a strike if their demands for higher pay were not met by mid-October.

In Umar Farooq's recent letter concerning Occupy Baltimore ("Occupy Baltimore: The Sun doesn't get it," Oct. 10), he states that The Sun's reporters wouldn't understand the concerns of the protesters. On the contrary, I believe that a reporter for the Sun would understand them all too well. The lament that the janitor who sweeps the stands after a football game makes too little money is nothing new. There's a mechanism by which the wages of that janitor can be raised, and that would be to raise the minimum wage.

Dozens of union janitors and their supporters rallied at the Inner Harbor on Wednesday evening to call for higher wages. The office cleaners, members of the Service Employees International Union, have been negotiating a new contract since Sept. 8 with representatives from major commercial cleaning companies in the region. They have threatened a strike if their demands for higher pay are not met by Oct. 15. "I have to work two jobs to survive," said Frances Smith, who cleans bathrooms in an office building at 100 E. Pratt Street.

George S. Rice Sr., who rose from a janitor to become a United States Fidelity & Guaranty executive, died Oct. 6 of cancer at a Palm Bay, Fla., hospice. He was 76. Mr. Rice, the son of a merchant seaman and a homemaker, was born one of 10 in Baltimore, and raised in Westport. He dropped out of parochial school and enlisted in the Air Force in 1951, where he served with the Air Force Security Police in Europe and earned his General Education Development diploma. Mr. Rice was discharged in 1954 and the next year began working as a janitor at USF&G's old Calvert Street office.

A janitor can make a difference, and Chuck Sands proved it. He died recently, and unexpectedly, and there's been such an outpouring of grief and love from Howard County - and from the students of Centennial High School, specifically - that I just had to take a moment here to tell you a little about their head custodian. "Mr. Chuck" was a father figure, mentor and general life encourager to hundreds of teenagers over 30 years in the Howard school system. On a couple of Facebook groups dedicated to him since his death, students from Centennial and Glenelg high schools called him "the heart and soul" of their schools, a generous, compassionate and positive man. "You're the only person I know who didn't seem to know what a bad day was," one of them wrote.

The students at Quarterfield Elementary School know him as Mr. Lee, the custodian who keeps their school in tip-top shape. But his kindness to them - say, buying a lactose-intolerant student without any money a juice drink when all her free lunch would afford her was milk - and his gentle nudging to pick up their trash or pay attention to their teachers is how Cain Lee has won them over. When he walks down the hall, carrying a box of equipment or pushing a broom, the students shout his name.

PHILADELPHIA - For years, Ann Marie Gore cleaned the toilets and polished the pews of an old stone church in West Philadelphia. She was the janitor. Now she is the pastor. And the administrator of a 60-child day-care center at the church. And the founder of a soup kitchen. Twice a week she cooks lunch in the church basement for 100 people. Ann Marie Gore has blossomed from a janitor into a custodian, in the grandest sense of the word. "Any way you can, come see Miss Ann," said Michael Newsuan, 52, a self-described alcoholic and Vietnam veteran who stood in line one recent Thursday for his plate of ribs, greens, rice, and yellow cake with chocolate icing.

It has never been worse for Juan Montes. But you won't find his situation reflected in official unemployment figures. As an illegal immigrant from Mexico, he flies below the radar screen in good times and bad. Montes, 26, says he came to Baltimore 10 years ago and has held a string of low-wage jobs in landscaping, cleaning and the like. The past two years have been tough in terms of finding jobs, but the past month has been toughest. His most recent job was as a $9-an-hour school janitor.