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by Emily Landes

Like any champion, Paul Loredo attributes his success to a combination of skill, practice and focused determination. Loredo spent months practicing for the big event, dedicating hours to shaving mere seconds off his performance times. Of course, he hit the gym for a challenging combination of cardio and weight training in the hopes of making himself faster and stronger than his competition. But Loredo isn’t an Olympian or a marathon runner. He is a maintenance professional with Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association, Inc. (CHISPA) in Salinas and the winner of this year’s national Maintenance Mania Championship.

Loredo first heard about the competition while attending the Northern California Rental Housing Conference and Expo in 2006. In order to make it to the national event, competitors must first come out on top at the regional version of the games. In both the local and the national competition, maintenance staff run a gauntlet of fix-it tasks with only their bare hands for tools. The times from each of the tasks are added together and whoever completes the challenges in the quickest overall time wins.

The atmosphere at the games is similar to any sporting event. Competitors stand in a central arena, anxiously awaiting their turns to compete in events that test how quickly they can, for example, install a garbage disposal or change out a doorknob. Meanwhile, cheer squads made up of coworkers do their best to encourage and support their maintenance staff. Some bring placards with slogans like, “Nail First Place Paul” and “Go Go Go Roberto”; others have full-fledged cheer routines and matching T-shirts.

Loredo found some of the cheerleaders to be helpful, but said that some of the more enthusiastic squads bordered on distracting. But, for the most part, when it got down to actually competing, he just blocked everything out and got focused on the task at hand.

And, after coming in second place in the 2007 games, Loredo spent hours perfecting those tasks. He set up his own versions of the Maintenance Mania events at a CHISPA property and invited his competing coworkers to join him in practice sessions a few times a week. But, when they didn’t display the same level of dedication that he did, Loredo decided to go ahead with his training regime on his own, a decision that made all the more sense when organizers made the 2008 competition an individual, rather than a team, event. “When they went solo, everything changed,” he recalls.

Even without practicing to the same extent as Loredo, other CHISPA staff took home bronze and silver ribbons at the local event. But no one came close to Loredo, who placed first in three out of the seven events. His times far surpassed the other competitors and his total time of two minutes and 24 seconds was a full 41 seconds faster than the second place competitor, Abraham Longboy of Avalon Bay.

Even though it was exciting to win in San Jose, Loredo never lost focus on the end goal: winning the national competition in Orlando. Between the local win in April and the national competition in June, he spent hours timing himself doing the events over and over again. He also watched his diet and hit the gym to get even more speed and strength.

Loredo also spent about 20 hours and approximately $200 on perhaps the most creative portion of the games, building a racecar out of maintenance supplies. All cars must use the same wheels and must weigh one pound or under. There are also certain size requirements. But other than that, competitors can get as imaginative as they want with their cars. At the local competition, heater vents, copper pipes, door handles, electric drills and light switch covers were just a few of the items used to construct and adorn the racecars.

Although Loredo had already built a car for the local games, he wanted to step it up for the national event and build a new car, meant to look like a work truck, from scratch. He joined several pieces of wood with joint compound to make it look molded. Then he painted it and had a friend airbrush multicolored flames on the front and sides. He added Christmas lights underneath that can be flipped on and off with a light switch on top. Wings reading “CHISPA” were attached to the back. The finishing touch was a removable ladder rack with a “Nor Cal” slogan on the top.

Building the car was Loredo’s favorite part of preparing for the games and its professional finish befits his history as a former hobby shop employee who used to do repairs on remote-control cars. But, as much as he enjoyed the work, he also took it very seriously. The car’s time on the track is added to the times in the other events to make up the total time that decides the winner of the games. Cars that don’t make it down the track at all are penalized 10 seconds, and each car is sent down the track twice, so it’s possible to be fined 20 seconds for a nonperforming car.

As the difference between Loredo and the second place winner at the national event was only 10 seconds, a slow car can undermine all of a competitor’s hard work in the other events. Or, as Loredo put it, “That can make you or break you.” Although Loredo did well in the car competition, he did not win. He did, however, win the People’s Choice vote for favorite car. Next year, he says, he will concentrate on making a “sports car” that is just as fast as it is attractive.
Concentration was one of the key components to winning at this year’s event. A few days before Loredo flew to Orlando, he stopped working out so that he wouldn’t be sore or injured for the games. He also started taking Focus Factor, an over the counter supplement that contains beta-carotene, vitamin E and C, magnesium and botanical extracts and is billed as a “brain support supplement.”

He even kept his mind on the upcoming games at the pre-Maintenance Mania party, where he says many of his competitors drank and smoked the night before the competition. Loredo attended the party, but didn’t drink and went to bed early. The next morning he ordered poached eggs, and took his vitamins and a few Focus Factor tablets. By the time the competition began, he was ready. “These guys backstage were pacing and nervous. They were praying,” he laughs. “But I just wanted to do it. I’m all business.”

Loredo never doubted that he would do well in the events. When asked if he was nervous about representing California, he says, “I felt that I was going to do everybody right.” After the first few events went well, and some of his biggest competitors took a few missteps, Loredo thought he might have a chance at the title. When organizers announced the winners of the individual events and his name was called three times, he knew he had won it. His most exciting moment came not when his name was called as the overall winner, but when he got to phone his 11-year-old son back in Salinas and tell him the news.

Word of his win also traveled quickly back to his employer and the president of CHISPA soon called with his congratulations. When Loredo returned from Florida, the company held two celebratory lunches in his honor and gave him a plaque to commemorate the occasion. “I just appreciate that they recognized what I did,”
says Loredo. “They said, ‘You put us on the map, nationally.’

Of course, accolades at work weren’t the only things Loredo received for his accomplishments. In addition to the all-expenses-paid trip to Orlando that he won in the local competition, the national win netted him a total of about $9,000 in cash and prizes, including two flat-screen TVs, a bedroom set and thousands of dollars in tools, which Loredo plans to use to build his car for next year’s competition.

Yes, even though the 2009 games are months away, Loredo is already thinking about next year. He plans to take a short break and then start training again. (Even though he won’t know all of the events for certain until two weeks before the local games, most of the events from this year are likely to be repeated.) He says that if he puts in the same amount of time, energy and effort as he did this year, he has no real reason to be nervous about losing his title. In fact, he says, if someone does manage to beat him at the local games next April, more power to him. “If, for some reason, I go in April and I don’t win, I want to talk to the new winner because that’ll be something,” he admits. “I’m really gonna give it all I got and if there’s some new, younger guy in better shape who surpasses me, he deserves it. I’m not gonna hand nothing over.”

 

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. Emily Landes is the managing editor of SF Apartment Magazine. Copyright © 2008 by Black Point Press. All rights reserved.