Veteran-Owned Business Makes Impact During And After Harvey

HUMBLE, TX -- It's unheard of for a brand-new business in a brand-new community to literally get their feet wet when disaster strikes, but that was the case in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey came ashore in Rockport, before setting its sights on the Houston area.

Tim Colomer, a Marine Corps veteran who launched his business, JDog Junk Removal Houston, only a few weeks before Hurricane Harvey made its historic landfall, was there in the days that followed to help his new friends and neighbors to remove and in some cases, restore items destroyed by the storm.

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But for Colomer, service to the community is something that is literally in his blood.

Colomer served in the Marines for 14-years, signing his name on the dotted line when he was just 17-years-old, and ultimately became an explosives ordnance specialist.

He was inspired by his father, who was a Chicago Police officer, and his mother who was a nurse.

"They really kind of instilled those core values...of service before self, and doing something for a greater good" Colomer said. "I joined the Marine Corps out of curiosity and how I could serve the country."

Colomer deployed to Iraq in 2006, at the height of fighting during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and was injured when his vehicle was blown up.

He left the Marines in 2007 and was awarded the Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal and a Purple Heart.

Fast forward 10 years, and the former Marine had just launched JDog Junk Removal Houston in the Lake Houston area in June with his Marine Corp buddy, David Gravely.

Early on, Humble and the Lake Houston community embraced the Marines and JDog Junk Removal.

"They love the veteran-owned business approach here," Colomer said.

And JDog wasn't just a veteran-owned business, but an eco-friendly business that recycles, reprocesses, and repurposes about 90 percent of the items it collects, reducing the environmental impact of this “junk.”

When Harvey arrived, Colomer and his new crew found themselves busy, both night and day.

"We were one of the few response teams that were able to get back in the neighborhoods," he recalled. "People's cars were flooded, and they were pushing them in the street, so there was no real easy way to get in and out of neighborhoods."

Often, JDog Junk Removal personnel were in those neighborhoods helping their new neighbors move cars and other debris to get where they were needed.

The devastation reminded Colomer of Iraqi.

"It was kind of like a war zone," he said. "Anything that the hazardous water touched was viewed as unusable by the EPA."

As the hazardous waters subsided, Colomer and his crew made contact with their new neighbors and began the slow process of restoration.

The devastation was unimaginable, with residents removing once prized possessions, and piling them on the curbside outside their homes.

Items such as appliances and furniture, were now considered junk, almost none of that could be salvaged, Colomer said.

However, some could, and those items were brought back to the warehouse, where those items could be sorted out, cleaned up and restored to working condition.

"I definitely have a creative group of veterans," Colomer said.

In the nearly a year since Hurricane Harvey, JDog has continued to help in many areas of the community, including:

• Donated over $25,000 in medical equipment to be used by the less fortunate through Project C.U.R.E.
• Partnered with the Atascocita Volunteer Fire Department to donate broken furniture for their fire training facilities
• Donates salvageable furniture, equipment and other household items to Humble Area Assistance Ministries (HAAM), Purple Heart, and Camp Hope, an in-patient PTSD treatment facility program.

JDog, which hosted its official grand opening in June 2018, a year after they came to the community, also works with other organizations to help the community, such as Habitat for Humanity to help when disabled veterans are retrofitting a home, and even helping to repurpose and rehabilitate medical equipment that's collected from estate sales.

While helping the community he lives in drives Colomer, so does working with a crew of fellow military veterans, but there are plans for greater growth in Houston.

"Here in Houston, my goal in the next 3-5 years is to employ over 150 veterans servicing all of Kingwood and beyond," he said.

Click the link to learn more about JDog Junk Removal Houston

Image: Tim Colomer/JDog Junk Removal Houston

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