Willy Williams says he'll never forget the time he pulled a rat out of a pipe at a high-priced restaurant and the time he answered a call to retrieve a woman's bra that had slid down the drain of a tiny bathroom sink.
JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
After retiring just before Christmas, Willy Williams went from drain cleaning to restoring old cars, doing craft work and rebuilding high-performance engines.
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Now retired, he wants everyone to remember most that in nearly 42 years as a drain cleaner, he was honest, friendly and “I cared about all my customers.”
Says his proud wife, Jan: “Willy became a household name and is well known in the San Diego plumbing and drain-cleaning business. There are people in San Diego who would have no one else in their home.”
Willy, 63, a Maui native and a retired Navy boatswain's mate who served two tours in Vietnam, got into the business quite by accident in 1966.
“I was just looking for a job,” he recalls, when he started working at the company.
He bought it 19 years later and renamed it Clean Rite Sewer & Drain Cleaning Inc. Willy retired May 31.
– OZZIE ROBERTS
