Wildomar man relies on family business in tough times

Jim Saitman, Wildomar resident and owner of TAC Extermination, at work. (Photo by Steve Fetbrandt)

To hear Jim Saitman tell it, it was always enough just to earn a living and support his wife and three kids.  That meant killing bugs.

But doing that has required some major adjustments and chance-taking in the past year.  Saitman, who moved to Arizona five years ago for cheaper housing, recently returned to Wildomar in hopes his family owned TAC Exterminators Inc. business will carry him through the recession.

“Business in Arizona slowed down so bad, people were just losing their houses out there,” he explained.

Over the last 20 y ears, Saitman, 41, has been general manager at Bugz of Arizona Inc, Dewey Pest Control and was chief executive officer of MadCo Pest-a-Side.  Upon returning to California last year, he teamed up Tom Walker, general manager of Hemet-based TAC Exterminators Inc. to open a TAC branch serving Corona, Norco, Lake Elsinore, Temecula and Riverside.

“Jim has a knowledge of pest identification and chemicals that is beyond most,” Walker noted on his website.

Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Saitman attended Monrovia High School and later attended Riverside Community College for a couple of years.

“I never had a great dream,” he said.  “I went to college because I was out of high school, everybody was doing it and it was the thing to do and I had a girlfriend there.  I thought I’d just take classes I liked, so I took mostly biology and astronomy classes.”

After getting fired from his job as a waiter at the Red Onion restaurant in Riverside, Saitman stumbled across a help-wanted advertisement in the newspaper for a job that paid $9 an hour.  The ad said, “Will Train, No Experience Necessary.”

“This was back in 1988-89.  That was considered good money back then–especially for someone with no experience,” Saitman said.

The company, Agricultural Pest Control Services, did pest control of mostly squirrels and gophers and animal trapping in Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

“We did parks, schools, cemeteries, ball fields, golf courses and airports.  We’d make sure coyotes, foxes, gophers and squirrels didn’t mess things up,” Saitman said.

As a service technical, Saitman would visit the company’s various accounts twice a month.

“I’d walk the all of the areas.  If I found anything, I’d kill it or trap it, poison it, throw bait at it, whatever was needed,” he said.

Now with 20 years of experience in the pest-control field, Saitman is licensed in structural pest control and five of the 11 categories of agricultural pest control.

“I can do crop-dusting; I can treat grain silos and do product fumigations.  I’m also licensed in Arizona in fumigation and general pest control,” he said.

His experience also allows him to lease his license to other pest-control operators.

“It’s kind of like having a real-estate broker’s license,” he said.  “I’m also working on my entomologist certification.”

Professional pest-control involves a lot more than spraying Raid into nooks and crannies, Saitman said.

Within agricultural pest control, for example, technicians need to handle highly toxic materials such as sodium cyanide and Fumitoxin, the trade name for the aluminum-phosphide fumigant used to treat warehouses, silos, grain elevators, steel tanks and bins, ships and barges.

“If you’re not trained and licensed to use those products, you need to have somebody who is licensed standing there with you to use it,” he said.

Saitman said his licenses allow him to work in most areas of structural and agricultural pest control.

“I’m a qualified subcontractor for Terminex.  When they get something that requires an agriculture license or a bit of knowledge that is beyond a technician, they call me,” he said.

Reach Steve Fetbrandt at sfetbrandt@gmail.com or (951) 764-8449.

SWRNN would like to hear your suggestions for future profiles of interesting businesses and/or business leaders in Southwest Riverside County.  Please contact Steve Fetbrandt at sfetbrandt@gmail.com with a brief description of your idea, your name, area code and telephone number and e-mail address.

Tags: arizona, corona, Jim Saitman, Lake Elsinore, Monrovia High School, norco, Riverside, Riverside Community College, Steve Fetbrandt, SWRNN, TAC Exterminators, Temecula, wildomar

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Business, Local News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.