Noel Calderon was working for a construction company when one of his old plumbing customers phoned and asked where he had been. Calderon told him he wasn’t doing plumbing anymore. The customer said he wanted him back.
The customer had shopping centers, and Calderon already knew them. He had worked for Roto-Rooter from 2000 until 2008 or so. When he left, his wife, whose family business is a staffing agency, found him the construction job. It was a detour, and it lasted until the phone rang.
The customer wanted more than a plumber. “My background is architecture and animation,” Calderon says. When he serviced those properties, he had drawn up the stores’ layouts for the customer, unasked and at no charge, “making it easier for my customers to understand the store layouts.” Calderon says that computer skill was mainly why the customer wanted him back. The customer offered to put more properties in his hands to manage.
“That became history,” Calderon says. “I started my company because of them.”
That company is Top Contender Drain Specialist, which Calderon dates to 2009. It still does a lot of work at shopping centers, along with a couple of homeowners associations in Burbank and the surrounding area. On one association job, a complex of about 30 units, the crew replaced the water main service and installed a backflow valve, then set out cones and caution tape to close it up.
The next big account came in 2012, from a caller who did not say who was calling. Someone told Calderon they had heard he responded around the clock. They had a lot of emergency calls, needed a plumber who would answer, and wanted to give him a shot.
“At the beginning I didn’t know it was Kaiser,” he says. “They just called me and said we just need a plumber.” He learned who his client was when he pulled up to the first job site. Kaiser kept him. “Every time they call I answer my phone and I’m there when they need me,” he says. He has been Kaiser’s emergency plumber since 2012, and for them he has driven as far as San Diego. “I’m not your average plumber,” he says.
Answering the phone extends to the customers waiting on him. Calderon describes a day when he was still finishing a job in Burbank with a five o’clock appointment next on his list. He texted that customer: “You know what, I got 30 more minutes here. I know we have a five. I’ll be there by 5:30.” When he gets within about 15 minutes, he sends another text saying so. That way, he says, the customer is “not waiting around, if they want to go get an ice cream or do something else.”
The equipment behind that range is heavy. Calderon runs diesel trucks that weigh 14,000 pounds, loaded so a job rarely waits on a missing part, and a plumbing supply house will open its store for him when it does. “I’m like ready for war,” he says.
He also works the jobs himself. “I’m not just a boss just pointing fingers,” he says. “I’m actually getting dirty and jumping in there.” When crew members help, he tells them what he doesn’t like and sends them back to wipe things down. They ask him why he is so picky. “I’m putting my stamp on this,” he says. “This is my work.” He wears shoe covers inside customers’ homes.
The crew is mostly family. His sons help, and so does a nephew. When a job needs 10 or 20 extra hands, his wife’s agency sends them, so not everyone on a site is in-house. He hopes his children will keep the company going. “I don’t want them to sell a company,” he says. “I want them to follow my footsteps if they can.”
Those footsteps run in an unusual direction. Calderon’s father was an electrician, and it was the son who taught him plumbing. The father started helping out on jobs, especially the big repair ones, and never stopped.
“My customers love my dad,” Calderon says. “76, still working.”