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Cooper’s Plumbing and Air is well known around the city of Bainbridge for serving the community and keeping ACs going in the otherwise unbearable Georgia summers. However, this past week, Cooper’s went above and beyond to fill a need for a member of the community. 

Janice Kelly is 88 years old and lives by herself in the Climax area. In February, her water stopped working, but she was unable to do anything about the situation. 

“She was taking a bath once a month at a neighbor’s house,” said Jack Share, Cooper’s Plumbing Manager. “She was flushing her toilets with bottled water. We went over there and fixed her water, and she was just ecstatic.”

Kenneth Stone, AC manager of Cooper’s Plumbing and Air, was hired to fix her AC when it gave out for several months, and during this time, he realized her situation. 

Her water problem was brought to the company’s attention, so Stone and Share investigated the situation. Stone paid for the materials needed, and a team of four volunteers offered up their time to fix her system. Trenton Jackson, Kelly Holleman, Zane White, and Hyler Trotman headed to Climax with Share and installer Paige Earp on November 11 to make her day.

“Everybody volunteered,” said Holleman. “It was cool to see everybody out there working together, and it didn’t take long. We didn’t have to work that hard because everybody pitched in and did their part.”

Although this type of project is not a regular occurrence for the company, it is by no means a one-time thing. 

“We’ve been very good about making sure we don’t have to tell anybody ‘no’ because they can’t afford it,” Holleman said. “Tony wants to make sure that people are taken care of. He’s been very good about making sure people don’t have to buy them because they can’t afford it.”

Cooper’s Plumbing and Air has a program called Cooper’s Cares that focuses on helping people in the community who are financially unable to get the assistance that they need.

“If an employee encounters a customer,” said Tony Cooper, Owner of Cooper’s Plumbing and Air, “that’s in a situation that they personally think needs assistance, then they can flag that up to management and get approval to do the work for free. And if it’s a small job, they’ll just do it on site right then and we just write it off.”

The workers at Cooper’s were happy to help someone in need, and Kelly’s gratitude says it all:

“I just wanna say thank you Cooper’s and Merry Christmas to me!”