'Will I have a job to come back to?': Coronavirus takes its toll on Collier, Lee workforce

An Everglades City airboat captain and single dad who wonders how he’ll pay his rent.

A young Lehigh Acres restaurant server with no job to go to. 

A wedding officiant with no weddings.

An actor with no show.

A hairstylist with no chair.

These are among the Southwest Florida residents whose lives have been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, which has roiled the economy and left a wake of joblessness and fear.

While we’ve been getting daily updates on the number of local residents who have contracted the COVID-19 virus, no one knows for sure yet how many people have lost their jobs because of it. And nobody really knows when this is going to end or how quickly we’ll rebound when it inevitably does.

What we do know is that the state’s unemployment agency has been swamped by tens of thousands of calls since Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered bars, nightclubs and gyms to close and restricted restaurants to take-out service only. Much of Southwest Florida’s economy is shut down and its tourism industry crippled in its busiest season.

More: Collier, Lee tourism and service workers particularly vulnerable during coronavirus, economic leaders say

The people who have lost their jobs are more than just numbers in state reports. They’re real people with families to feed, bills to pay and careers that have temporarily been put on hold.

Over the last week, the Naples Daily News and The News-Press have been reaching out to people in Collier and Lee counties who have suddenly found themselves out of work because of this virus. These are just some of their stories.

Airboat captain, single dad: 'I live week to week'

Johnny Markley has one more paycheck coming and a few hundred dollars cash. That’s it.

His bank account is in the red. He’s already behind on rent. He’s got an 8-year-old son to care for and no health insurance or benefits.

The 39-year-old single father lost his job Monday as an airboat captain with Captain Jack’s Airboat Tours in Everglades City. Business dried up because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“People like me, I’ve got to work to feed my family. I also don’t want to risk spreading the virus around, but I just don’t have a choice. And then (Monday) the choice was taken from me,” said Markley, who's been an airboat captain for almost 15 years.

“It’s annoying when I hear people say it’s no big deal, just stay home for a couple of weeks. I live week to week. Right now is the busiest time of the year for me.”

Markley said he’s tried applying for unemployment, but the website is overloaded and when he calls he sits on hold for hours. Florida’s unemployment benefits, capped at $275 a week, aren't even enough to cover the rent for the Golden Gate Estates home he shares with his younger brother, also a laid-off Captain Jack’s airboat captain.

Without unemployment or a stimulus check from the federal government, Markley said he won’t be able to stay afloat for long.

More: Coronavirus in Florida: Steps to take and calls to make if you find yourself suddenly unemployed

“We can go a couple weeks and that’s it,” he said.

The Everglades City airboat tour business was crippled a few years back by Hurricane Irma. Markley said he was just getting back to even after that crisis. 

“I’ve been working for these past two years and just now was getting to the point where I was out of debt, paying off my credit cards and everything,” he said. “It’s taken me years to get back to where I wasn’t upside down all the time, and then this happened, and I’m right back to where I was in Irma.”

Markley shares custody of his son with his ex-wife. His son was staying with her early in the week when Markley learned he was out of work. That was probably for the best, he said.

“To be totally blunt, I’m glad he hasn’t been here the last two days because I’ve been a mess,” said Markley, who said he’s gone through fits of depression watching the airboat business sink.

Markley said he wishes DeSantis would just lock the state down for a couple of weeks to try to halt the virus’s spread.

He said he’s started looking for work in other industries – he’s got a friend with an air-conditioning company – but “everybody is losing business.”

More: Congress set to boost unemployment payments by $600 a week

Longer term, he’s worried about the future of Florida’s airboat tour business.

“Will I have a job to come back to?” he asked. “I don’t have any trades to fall back on. I’m a U.S. Coast Guard licensed captain and I do airboat tours, and I’m very good at it.”

He said he’s not worried so much about the virus.

“It’s what it's doing to the economy that’s scary.”

— Ryan Mills

More: Chalk art, book swaps. How SWFL neighborhoods are making life bearable amid COVID-19

Immokalee farmworker: 'We don't have the rent for next week' 

Late last week, a crew leader called together dozens of farmworkers picking from the tomato fields near Immokalee. Sweaty and tired, the group gathered. The day was done.

This would be their last shift for the season, the crew leader told them. 

Due to the pandemic, the company had shuttered the packing house. There was no need to pick the tomatoes. The fruit would be left to rot in the fields.

Flor De Maria Miranda Lopez, 19, was struck with sadness and worry. How would she pay the rent? Buy food for her family? 

Field work has been her primary income since arriving from Guatemala four years ago.

Before last week, she had been working 40 hours and earning about $400 to $500 each week. Her partner is also a farmworker. He still has work, but it was scaled back to a few days a week. She didn’t know how long his job would last.

This is a problem not only for them but also for their 2-year-old son.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Miranda Lopez said. “We don’t have the rent for next week.”

Their rent is $525 a month for a bedroom in a trailer. Three other people rent the other bedroom. As of Wednesday, her family had about $300, Miranda Lopez estimated.

“I’m worried about the rent but also that the illness arrives here and something happens,” said Miranda Lopez, who does not have health insurance.

After being laid off last week, Miranda Lopez picked up their son from the center run by Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which serves migrant and rural poor children throughout the state.

She’s been keeping him home with her since, limiting where they go. 

More: Coronavirus news Southwest Florida: How to stay caught up with us on the latest developments

RCMA staff has been educating parents about social distancing, but they also know some crew leaders are still packing buses with workers.

Yet they’re hearing of more workers who will face unemployment much sooner than expected. Next week, the organization plans to start distributing food to families. They’re furiously searching for more grants.

On Wednesday, Miranda Lopez received canned fruit, corn flour, oil and meat from the Catholic church.

She’d like to see governmental leaders consider ways to help farmworkers with housing. 

Whether her family would be homeless next week was up in air.

“I don’t know. We can try talking to the landlord.”

— Janine Zeitlin

Alva hairstylist: 'I don't really have a plan'

As a single mother of two earning her living as a hairstylist, Valerie Diaz has never had a lot of financial wiggle room.

She lives paycheck to paycheck, paying bills as they come and helping her oldest son get through college in Atlanta. But she’s always worked, at least since she was 13 years old.

Now Diaz, 45, who lives in Alva, is out of her job as an assistant manager at the Great Clips at Gulf Coast Town Center after the salon closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. She said she doesn’t really know how she’ll make it without a paycheck, but she knows she will. Somehow. She’s been broke before.

“I don’t really have a plan aside from I will apply for unemployment and I will apply for food stamps, see if I can get any of that,” she said. “I’m just going to have to wait it out. There is nothing else I can do.”

Diaz said business at her salon started tapering off in early to mid-March. There weren’t enough people walking through the door to support all the store’s stylists.

They tried slashing the store’s hours and cutting back on the number of stylists working each shift. On Saturday, March 21, she received the message on her phone. Her salon was shutting down.

More: Southwest Florida has questions about the coronavirus. We're answering them.

Poof. Her only source of income was gone.

“I don’t do hair on the side,” Diaz said. “A lot of people that are hairstylists do hair on the side, but I don’t because I have children to raise, my house to take care of, and then I have my job. And my job is a lot of work.”

Diaz said she almost never gets the child support payments she’s owed. And she admits she’s never been very good at saving money. So she doesn’t have much of a cushion to fall back on.

“Not at all. I don’t have money to put aside. I don’t make that great amount of money where I can put money aside,” Diaz said. “I’ve never been a great saver. Even putting aside $10 has been an issue for me because there’s always something that I need to do.”

Still, she supports the business shutdowns. She has an 84-year-old mother with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who would be at high risk if she contracted COVID-19.

Diaz has family in New Zealand, which has instituted a virtual shutdown of all nonessential businesses, and she said she would support a move like that here if it would help stop the virus’s spread.

“The price is definitely worth paying,” she said of losing her income. “Do I think this is the right decision to lay us off? Yes. Am I going to be hurting for it? Yes. I am most definitely going to be hurting for it.”

— Ryan Mills

Lehigh Acres man's uncertain future

Sometimes a day's tips would be $100 at the restaurant where Sam Bostic worked. With good tips and a $12 hourly wage, the 25-year-old was able to put a little away for a rainy day. 

That rainy day came the week before last when Bostic caught a bad cold and missed work. Bostic doesn’t have health insurance and had to dip into savings for visits to an urgent care.

His illness drained the rainy day fund. Then came the storm.

While he was home taking a nap and anticipating a return to work, he received a text from the general manager telling him to check his email for “an important update." He was being “temporarily” laid off. 

“I should have expected it,” he said. “But it was a bit of a shock. You see it happening to other people. But I didn’t realize the seriousness until it affected me personally.”

Bostic wasted no time in applying for unemployment benefits. He rents a room in a home in Lehigh Acres, has a car payment and a $400-a-month car insurance bill. His landlord “will work with me the best he can,” Bostic said. But “my car payment, they don’t care. The (car) insurance, they don’t care.”

More: Naples offers community hotline during coronavirus pandemic

And although his mother has been sending him lists of companies that are hiring, he's reluctant to start another job, hoping he can get his old one back.

He liked working front-of-house at Seed and Bean Market, the downtown Fort Myers cafe. It provided him the flexibility he needed to pursue his acting career.

Bostic landed a role as Benny in the Laboratory Theater of Florida’s production of “In the Heights." But the four-week run was was postponed. The experience would have looked good on his resume when he planned to audition in May for the Florida Professional Theatres Association in Sarasota, where Bostic hoped to land more acting work and perhaps relocate.

Getting laid off and the stress of making ends meet are taking a toll on his psyche too. 

“It’s like PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). It’s hard for me to accept. It’s not something I did. It’s not because I’m bad at my job. With everything going on, they had to…” Bostic said, his voice trailing off. “It’s a different feeling. It’s weird.”

— Melanie Payne

Business owner, partner see beginning of end

Zachari VanDyne has put a dozen years into Casa Shanti, his small Fort Myers alternative and holistic health business.

He’s hoping COVID-19 doesn’t unravel it in a matter of weeks.

“I’ve invested 12 years of my life into my small business,” the 36-year-old Fort Myers man said. “Money, sweat, tears. To think of not having that anymore really tears me up inside. I think I provide an amazing service to the community. It would be heartbreaking if I couldn’t pay my rent and my landlord wouldn’t do something about that.”

VanDyne’s 2052 Cottage Street storefront offers retail products for an alternative lifestyle including crystals, clothing, leather goods as well as psychic readings (VanDyne is a psychic), meditation courses and offers a venue for works done by local artists.

Adding to the stress, as of Saturday, VanDyne's life partner Jamie Bailey's eight years as a hairstylist at Studio 44 on McGregor Boulevard was put on hold when the salon closed in the face of the expanding pandemic.

“We (the staff) talked at the end of each day,” Bailey, 30, said. “After each press conference each stylist got more and more uncomfortable. When we provide a service, I can literally feel (customers) breathe on my body. We had fears about that. How do you comply with the CDC and touch people?”

Bailey said that the staff agreed, and the owner said she had to think about what was best for the staff, and she decided it was best to close the salon Saturday.

“Hopefully for two weeks,” Bailey said. “But things are changing daily.”

More: ‘It’s happening to real people’: Naples man who has coronavirus details experience

The pair don’t know what is going to happen only that the precipice is drawing near and there’s no safety net.

“People are not really spending money on services, crystals or incense or readings,” VanDyne said. “They don’t know when they are going back to work or when their next dollar is coming in. My business has been extremely impacted. I’m considered a luxury, they don’t need me to live and breathe.”

Bailey said his job as a hairdresser meant he was in close proximity to customers daily.

“One of the hardest things to do is to keep that 6-foot distance, touching their faces, their head,” he said. “People were becoming uncomfortable when someone coughed.”

VanDyne said he has tried mitigating the situation at his business, to little avail.

“I have done a lot of things to comply, sanitizing everything, wiping things down, limiting to 10 people in at a time,” he said. “Even then we’re finding that’s not enough. People know there’s a pandemic out there and they want to stay safe.”

Even an attempt at curbside delivery didn’t help. “That falls more onto people and their money and being out of work,” VanDyne said, adding that it has also impacted the artists he helps promote through Casa Shanti. “We’ve had to cut back. People are not spending money right now.”

For the two the defining line is approaching quickly.

“It’s a weird situation where a lot is up in the air,” VanDyne said. “I don’t really know what to think and what’s going on. What I think spiritually is a whole other ballgame. For me, April 1 is when I’ll start seeing the impacts.  Up til now I was able to handle it. But, do I have the money to pay bills coming up? No, I do not.”

— Michael Braun

Fort Myers salon owner forced to lay off her daughter, shut her dream business

Jackie McCamish has been doing nails since she started at age 9 at her mother’s nail salon in their village in the Philippines.

One day, she promised her mother, she would start a business too.

“This is like a gift in the family,” said McCamish, 56.

It took a bit. She emigrated to the United States in her 30s, worked at an assisted-living facility and began threading eyebrows at the mall.

She worked her way up to manager and saved enough to open her own business: Jackie’s Eyebrow Threading, Nail & Hair Salon in a Fort Myers plaza.

That was seven years ago.

Last week, it pained her to close it, which meant laying off her 24-year-old daughter too. Business had dropped about 50% since news of Florida coronavirus cases hit and had continued to taper.

“She’s waiting for instructions for when it’s safe to open the doors,” said her husband and salon co-owner Tim McCamish, 61. “She’s concerned about her customers.”

As yet, they have about a fourth of April’s rent.

“I’m scared because I always pay on time and this month I’m so nervous because I don’t have money coming in,” Jackie said.  

Within a month, the other expenses, like Internet and cable, will get to be too much.

“Though she’s closed, the bills keep coming,” Tim said.

He’s heard about small-business loans included in a coronavirus relief bill that passed the Senate Wednesday. But they’ll need help to navigate the process.

“Some of the help you have to be careful of,” Tim said. “It may not really help except for the big businesses and loan companies. That’s why it would be nice to get advice.”

More: Coronavirus Q&A: What help is available for small businesses?

One of the hardest parts? Disappointing customers when the salon needs money.  

Some have called and asked: Can you make an exception?  

No, they apologize. For safety, we can’t.  

— Janine Zeitlin 

Florida Rep actor: Thin times, but she's done this before

Rachel Burttram Powers had rehearsed three weeks for Florida Repertory Theatre’s play “A Doll’s House, Part 2.” Opening night was just days away.

Then — nothing.

The March show got canceled before it could open in downtown Fort Myers. And so did the actor's other jobs, including Florida Rep’s PlayLab Festival and an upcoming project with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Ala. All due to coronavirus fears.

Suddenly, Powers was out of work — along with almost every other actor she knows in the country.

“It’s happening locally, and happening regionally and happening globally,” Powers says. “It’s not just where will we find theater work here. It’s where will we find theater work anywhere in the nation.”

Luckily, the Fort Myers actor and her husband have a safety net. Brendan Powers — her co-star in “A Doll’s House, Part 2” — is still working in Florida Rep’s administration, including helping organize the theater’s March 28 virtual gala.

On top of that, they’re both members of the union Actor’s Equity Association, which guarantees them at least six months of health insurance and two weeks of pay if they get laid off (Florida Rep pitched in an extra third week of pay, too, Powers says).

More: What events in Southwest Florida are canceled, postponed because of the coronavirus?

Plus they have their savings — although Powers notes that won’t last forever. “It’s not much."

Still, both she and her husband worry about the future and how long the country’s theaters will remain dark.

“We’re not paycheck to paycheck,” she says. “But if this lasts for a while — we don’t know. It’s very uncertain.”

Still, they’ll survive, she says. They’ve been jobless before, as actors.

They know how to pinch pennies. They know how to stop eating at restaurants and stretch their grocery budget. And if it comes to it, Powers says she might apply for unemployment or find an online job.

“As a two-artist household, Brendan and I have weathered some pretty thin times together,” she says. “So, luckily we know how to navigate those waters.

"Not that we would really want to revisit that. But it’s not completely foreign to us. So we do know how to go pretty thin.”

— Charles Runnells

Everglades City waitress wonders how she’ll pay bills, put food on the table

It was setting up to be a record-breaking season at Everglades City’s Triad Seafood Market & Café. Business was booming at the stone crab buffet. Servers were making good tips.

Brittany Smallwood thought this would be the year her family could finally finish the last home repairs left over from Hurricane Irma in 2017.

“We were actually having the best season we’ve had in the seven years I’ve worked there,” said Smallwood, 36, the mother of three teenage boys.

Then the coronavirus hit, and the bottom fell out.

Smallwood and the rest of the Triad servers —  mostly mothers — are now out of work. Smallwood’s husband was just let go from his job at Jungle Erv’s Airboat Tours.

She figures they can stay afloat for another week, week and a half.

“We just don’t know how we’re going to pay our bills or even put food on the table,” Smallwood said.

More: In the Know: As residents cope at home with work and coronavirus scare, did vandalism or accidents bring down their internet, TV services?

Her oldest son, who’s 16, is still doing deliveries for another local restaurant, but Smallwood said she worries he could be infected with the COVID-19 virus. Her middle son has Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and she worries what would happen to him if he caught the virus.

She’s staying away from her parents and grandparents. She’s left the house once in the past week. The family has no health insurance.

“I guess we’re kicking ourselves in the butts because a few weeks ago we were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we just wish we could have a few days off in this house together so we could get stuff done.’ Well, that came back to bite us,” Smallwood said.

Smallwood said she wishes DeSantis would shut the entire state down to stop the virus’s spread. She thinks that by doing that “maybe we can move on and get it out of the way a little bit quicker.”

“But where everything is just partially shut down, I don’t think it's doing that much of good,” she said. “Have you been to Naples? They’re going around like it's every other day. No one is listening to the rules, really.” 

— Ryan Mills

Fort Myers cook lost two jobs in a week

Until last week, Marcus Colon put in 60 hours a week as a cook in two downtown Fort Myers restaurants. He was getting two paychecks a week; it was constant cash flow for the 39-year-old. 

“Up until last Friday,” he was working, Colon said. “I’ve been furloughed indefinitely until things clear up at both.”

His wife is a teacher and continues to be paid. He will apply for unemployment benefits but has to wait because he worked last week and won’t be eligible until Sunday.

“If it takes too long (to get benefits), it will be real rough,” Colon said. “Even if it’s approved expeditiously, there are going to be some major cutbacks because it won’t pay what I was making.”

Colon has a car payment, child support, rent and student loans to pay, he said. 

“The first thing to go will be cable and Netflix,” Colon said. “I have my phone. I can watch YouTube on the phone. ... And I’ll try not to use the lights and open up the curtains in the daytime.”

In some ways, the pandemic has helped him save money.

“A lot of the plans I had were canceled outright,” he said. “I was going to go to New York. No one is going to New York now.”

Even being sequestered at home has an upside, in Colon’s assessment. “One good thing about a quarantine, you don’t go anywhere so you don’t have to buy gas.”

— Melanie Payne

In it together: Daughter and dad are a team

“My whole life changed in the past five days,” Candice Sanzari said. The 27-year-old had worked for three years at an acupuncture clinic doing whatever needed to be done to “make sure the office was running smoothly,” she said.

When the office was forced to close on March 20, she was laid off.

“They basically said it was in my best interest for them to lay me off now so I could collect unemployment,” Sanzari said. “And when they hopefully reopen they can rehire me.”

“My bills I can still pay for the time being. I don’t have a ton fortunately, so I don’t have too much to worry about. And I have some amount of money saved up.”

And the real life saver — Sanzari has her dad, Philip. 

“I’m in a more fortunate situation than most. My dad and I are a team supporting each other,” Candice Sanzari said.

Philip, 67, is still collecting a paycheck for now. 

He is a school bus driver, a job he’s held for eight years, and he expects to be paid at least through April 15, when he was told by the Lee County School District that he should be able to return to work. 

At this stage of his life, “I’m not supposed to be doing this. I should be on the beach, having a piña colada,” he said. But in the last recession, “I went through a ton of money trying to keep afloat” with his real estate and painting businesses. 

He got a commercial driver license and started driving the school bus. “My plan post-virus is to eventually be able to retire. But every year it gets pushed further back,” he said. 

And the pandemic is another setback. “I really want to support Candice,” he said, who is a talented playwright, something she does in addition to her job. 

More: 'It's heartbreaking': Hotel operators grapple with financial losses during coronavirus pandemic

But when she lost her regular paycheck, “I told her not to worry,” Philip Sanzari said. “I don’t have a lot, but we’ll manage and get through it."

Candice Sanzari is afraid that many small businesses could fail. She's hoping the one she worked for doesn't and she can get her old job back. But if it doesn't work out, "I think I'll find a way to land on my feet," she said. "I'm in a more fortunate situation than most people. My dad and I are a team."

— Melanie Payne

Wedding officiant closed her business

Janis Houston has grown her wedding officiating business every year for the past 5 ½ years.

Many of her clients travel in from out of state to get married on the beach, and they rely on Houston to write and perform their ceremonies, and to coordinate rehearsals.

But her business has dried up because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m not doing weddings now, obviously,” she said. “I’ve had five cancel in the last two weeks because they were upcoming and they can’t get to the beach because they’re closed. They can’t get their marriage license because they’re closed.

“I’ve shut my business down.”

Houston, 64, lives in North Naples with her husband, her daughter and son-in-law, and her two 11-month-old grandchildren. While her family doesn’t rely on her wedding money to pay the bills, it’s nice to have the extra income and she no longer gets to do “something I absolutely love to do.”

“It impacts my ability to build my business, to keep the clients, to keep the confidence in them that they can come on a plane and come down here and stand on a beach and get married and not get sick. It’s going to take months to recover that,” Houston said.

“This is a horrible financial crisis on top of a health crisis,” she added.

Houston has been giving partial refunds to clients for travel fees, marriage license fees and her time at the altar. She said it was the right thing to do.

Her husband retired about a week ago, and he can’t access his quickly diminishing 401K for over a month, she said.

“For 45 days I have zero income, so the weddings would have been helpful,” she said. But, she acknowledged, “there are so many more people worse off.”

More: COVID-19 Q&A: FGCU medical professionals answer your coronavirus questions

Houston said she has “mixed feelings” about the response of state and federal leaders. She wonders if Florida should have taken more drastic measures to stop the spread of the virus.

“I don’t know if they’re doing the right thing. I hope they’re doing what they think is the best thing for everybody,” she said. “It’s a tough call. I’m sure their job is extremely difficult and a lot of pressure.”

— Ryan Mills

FGCU student says it's more than losing a paycheck; it's losing a love

Kalie Miner is determined to take the two summer classes she needs to finish her degree at Florida Gulf Coast University.

The 22-year-old theater major was saving money from her job at the Florida Repertory Theatre to pay for them. But then she was laid off when the rest of the season was canceled at the downtown Fort Myers theater.

“I have to remind myself this is temporary. And I know Florida Rep made the right decision out of concern for the safety of their employees and patrons,” she said. “They’re a business and have to keep afloat, and I understand and respect that.”

Miner lives with her mother and younger sister in Fort Myers. Her mom works as a nurse at NCH Healthcare System.

“In times like these, it’s scary. I want my mom to be safe too. She’s putting her life on the line to help others, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

More: 'I'm not OK': Coronavirus pandemic strands FGCU, FSW international athletes in Fort Myers

Miner hopes this fall to start building a career in the entertainment industry and to someday be an artistic director for a theater.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the plan for now but hasn’t diminished Miner’s enthusiasm for the arts and entertainment industry.

“Other than the financial aspect and being scared – it is scary right now – I simply miss going to work every day,” Miner said. “To do what you love every day, it’s so much more than making money. … Lots of people say, ‘I have to go to work.’ I say, ‘I GET to go to work.’”

— Melanie Payne