Content about Person Attributes

BOSTON — The former owner of several Massachusetts Laundromats has been indicted in connection with allegedly tampering with gas meters and stealing natural gas valued at approximately $214,000, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced Thursday.

A statewide grand jury indicted Steven R. Bankert, 56, of North Attleboro, Mass., on charges of larceny over $250 (six counts), willful injury or interference with gas meter or other property (10 counts), and failure to file income tax returns (six counts).

“We allege that this defendant tampered with multiple gas meters at Laundromats he operated,” Coakley says. “He allegedly manipulated the meters in order to bilk utility companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Her office began investigating Bankert in August 2011 after Columbia Gas filed a complaint. The company suspected tampering and theft of gas after detecting low and erratic consumption patterns.

The investigation determined that from 2008 to 2012, Bankert, who is a licensed electrician, allegedly tampered with 10 gas meters at six Laundromats he owned in Attleboro, Brockton, Lawrence and Worcester for the purpose of stealing gas from Columbia Gas valued at approximately $205,000 and from Nstar valued at more than $9,000.

Investigators also allege that Bankert has not filed income tax returns for the years 2006 to 2011.

He is scheduled to be arraigned at a later date.

PEMBROKE, Mass. — This is not a column from which you are going to learn anything useful and hands-on. But maybe it will be the best column you ever read. “Live for the obituary” — have you ever heard that expression? It is one used particularly by writers. But it also can be applied across the professions. It means to live your life so that your obituary acquits you well.

Let me illustrate using a Boston Globe obituary dated June 16. The headline read, “Mary Chin, 103; operated laundry in Charlestown.” The second sentence says it all: “Widowed more than six decades ago when she was a young mother of nine, Mrs. Chin remained a pillar of strength for four generations of her Charlestown family.”

A few sentences round out the story: “Though 4-foot-10, Mrs. Chin seemed to fear nothing and no one. She shooed away drunks who shuffled from bars that flanked her store and deftly handled disputes that inevitably arose as owner of her late husband’s laundry business. And there wasn’t a wrinkle on a customer’s shirt that stood a chance with her, family and friends said.”

And later: “Mrs. Chin bought a Singer sewing machine to mend clothing, and she was involved in all aspects of the family laundry business. Six days a week, she sorted clothes customers dropped off, then washed, dried, and ironed them.

“She also kept books and ran the schedules of her children, who often came into the shop to help when they weren’t doing homework.”

Her children commented on the lessons she taught them. Don’t waste time. Save your money. Work a little harder. No gossip. Always be polite to even the toughest of customers.

Finally, her son Thomas offers, “She had good rapport with (customers). But the rapport was based on providing good prompt service and being attentive to the customer’s requirements.”

If you are like me, you might be a little teary-eyed after perusing the entire piece. Or you might be saying, “What a sap. To devote yourself to a lousy little business all your life seems like a fool’s path.”

I’m not here to argue the merits of different philosophies of life, but I am here to say that Mary Chin’s qualities as a businesswoman make hers an extraordinary story. Clearly, the Boston Globe recognized it as a life well spent. The publication devoted 28 column inches to the piece, while most of us have to pay several hundred dollars for just 3 inches. Mary Chin got her moment of fame for free.

I like the bit about this 4-foot-10 woman being fearless. I see in front of me her picture: round-faced, mouth open, as if ready to answer any question, eyes looking straight out, facing the world unflinchingly. I can see this little woman standing up to a 6-foot-tall customer, saying she had done everything she could to get the stain out but it was too engrained in the fabric. The angry customer walks out pacified, knowing Mrs. Chin must be right. 

As I read the obituary, the story fleshes itself out. She and her husband owned the laundry, when he suddenly died. She was perhaps 35, with nine children, the youngest being 2 years old. So she rolled up her shirtsleeves, arranged with the children and neighbors to take care of the young ones, and ran the business full-time for more than 40 years.

Isn’t that just incredible? Spending forty-plus years at the helm of a work-intensive business, with nine children at home. Today, many widows would beg support from family, go on welfare, and seek counseling because of the unfairness of the situation. Not Mary Chin. With her feet apart, and her mouth clenched, she said, “I will not buckle under. I will not let life take me down.” 

I do not know her children. But I bet they all respected their mother. And I bet they all have learned her lessons of self-reliance and can-do-ism. And I bet they all are acquitting themselves well, despite the fact that life has thrown them a curve. As they say, hardscrabble circumstances are good for character. 

I like her rules of work: work a little harder, don’t gossip, be polite to even the toughest customer, etc. Such principles are the bedrock of good business practice. Work a little harder—can’t we all do that? Can’t we pay closer attention to the details? Can’t we go the full nine yards to research a problem? Can’t we stay another 15 minutes, or come in 15 minutes early, to fix a garment?

No gossip—how many of us spend an hour a day through conversation, e-mail, texts, on the phone “dissing” others? If that hour were spent on productive matters, consider how much more efficient we could be.

About politeness, these days I see so many attendants who exhibit poor attitudes or are just going through the motions. This makes me not want to patronize their store. If only attendants would have Mary Chin’s sincerity in trying to help the customer, much dissatisfaction and aggravation would be avoided.

Her son succinctly summarized her business philosophy: maintaining a good rapport with customers based on providing good, prompt service and being attentive to the customer’s requirements. What a perfect statement of basic business principles! If only every business had that in mind.

I was at a Laundromat where the attendant was chatting away with a customer while another customer with a problem stood there. I’m sure that going through the waiting customer’s head was, “Why doesn’t she look at me?” Mary Chin would have paused her conversation with the one customer, looked to the waiting customer and asked politely how she could assist her.

What will your obituary say about you? This is not a macabre notion. Rather, it’s food for thought. Perhaps working six days a week over 40 years is not your mantra. But you sure wouldn’t like your obit to read, “He spent as much time away from his business fishing and golfing,” would you?

I salute you, Mary Chin. You’re an inspiration to us all.

ATLANTA — Four members of a Cobb County document fraud ring that made counterfeit Social Security cards, permanent resident cards, and other fake identification documents and then sold them from a Smyrna Laundromat have been sentenced to federal prison on a charge of conspiring to produce fraudulent identification documents, United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates reports.

The defendants, all from Mexico, received sentences ranging from nine to 28 months, plus two years supervised probation. Four additional co-defendants in the scheme have also pleaded guilty and await sentencing on various dates over the next three months.

The organization used a coin laundry located in Smyrna to facilitate the sale of the counterfeit documents and offered their services to illegal aliens who frequented the Laundromat.

Between March 2010 and August 2011, Homeland Security Investigations agents, U.S. Secret Service agents and investigators with the Governor’s Office of Consumer Protection purchased counterfeit identification documents at various locations in Cobb County, Ga., as part of an undercover operation.

The documents included Social Security cards, permanent resident cards and State of Georgia driver’s licenses. Using physical and video surveillance, agents determined the location of the organization’s counterfeit document production facility.

In September 2011, agents executed a search warrant at an apartment complex in Marietta, Ga. Agents recovered document-making equipment, including computers and printers, and recovered electronic files containing more than 2,000 images of fraudulent identification documentation, including Social Security cards, permanent resident cards, birth certificates, driver’s licenses from more than 20 states, and various other documents. Firearms were also recovered.

“Manufacturing counterfeit identification documents is a serious problem in our community,” Yates says. “These defendants ran an operation that enabled many illegal aliens to get their hands on identification that made it appear as if they were legally in the United States. This crime impacts our community in many ways, not the least of which is the negative impact on the credit history and financial well-being of people whose Social Security numbers were unlawfully used on the counterfeit documents.”

“This case demonstrates the wide-reaching effects of the manufacturing and selling of counterfeit identification documents and its impact on innocent victims and our communities,” says Reginald Moore, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service Atlanta Field Office. “The importance of cooperation among our law enforcement partners remains paramount to our ability to catch those that are involved in these types of fraudulent activities.”

MARFA, Texas — A well-known business strategy is to run two businesses under one roof, share the overhead, and mingle the clientele. Perhaps the best example of this in our industry is Tumbleweed Laundry.

Daniel Browning is the “Laundromateur” who pulled off the magical feat of combining an ice cream parlor, coffee shop and Laundromat. The genius is that Browning has a monopoly in all three markets.

Relaxation and Art

Marfa is a small town of 2,200 residents with quite a bit of tourist trade. The reason for tourism is twofold: the place is a relaxing area to visit, with Big Bend National Park nearby, and it is the home of Chinati, the contemporary art museum, which designates Marfa as an art town.

In the 1970s, a successful New York artist named Donald Judd purchased a 550-acre former German prisoner-of-war camp. He began creating his abstract sculptures—large metal boxes as well as concrete shapes—and setting them all over the grounds as well as inside the 30-odd buildings. Then he invited other artists to come and work, and encouraged them to leave many works at the facility.

He got backing from the Chinati Foundation, thus Chinati was born. With daily guided tours at $25 a person, Chianti attracts serious art fans. All this is most unusual for a remote west Texas town that’s a 21/2-hour drive to the nearest city, El Paso, and close to the Mexican border.

Laundry Born in Former Hospital

So, back to Browning. Moving from Austin to Marfa, he and his wife envisioned a Laundromat since there wasn’t one in town. He produced a 130-page business plan, purchased a building, and set about creating a going concern. He dealt with Dexter equipment because he thought the company offered a good financing package. The total equipment cost came in at the $75,000 range, but he only had to put $40,000 into the venture.

The building he found that would work was an old, tiny, seven-room hospital. “Half the people living in Marfa today were born where the dryers are,” Browning says.

By doing all the construction work himself in nine weeks, he converted the hospital into a Laundromat and upstairs apartment.

His idea was to combine retail, commercial and wash, dry and fold (flip and fold). He went after flip-and-fold volume, but found that it was too sporadic and created too many hassles to make it worth dealing with. But he won hotel and restaurant trade, and his commercial operation was off and running.

One day, Browning was doing a side job, fixing a coffee shop’s espresso machine, when the owner said they were closing. Browning’s wife had been in the coffee business in earlier years, and she sometimes talked about opening a shop in Marfa. Something clicked. Why not combine a coffee shop alongside a laundry, and throw in ice cream to boot?

Browning studied his floor plan, and it became clear that he could give up some space for a coffee shop. Approximately a year and a half ago, the coffee shop/ice cream parlor came into being. It helped that the second coffee shop in town had closed, so he has a monopoly.

Perhaps Kaki Aufdengarten, Browning’s regular employee, says it best: “We’re the only Laundromat in town, the only coffee shop, the only ice cream parlor, so in a sense, we’re not a company. We’re a public service.”

Wednesday: Ingenuity is what makes America great...