Mandy Hilkey got a pleasant surprise when she called a Vancouver landscaping company to give her an estimate on some yardwork.
“I was asking ‘How much is it going to cost?’ and ‘Could it be done before he comes home?’ ” she said.
“He” is Hilkey’s husband, Nathan, a staff sergeant with the Army National Guard. She found out recently that he is expected to return from Afghanistan, his fourth tour overseas, this weekend.
But when she called a customer service representative at GRO Outdoor Living to ask about the price, “he kept avoiding my question,” she said. “He said something along the lines of … ‘We’re going to take care of all of this for free.’ “
Hilkey said she was shocked. Her husband has been deployed since May and she’s been working to make things nice for his return. She’s already deep-cleaned their northeast Hazel Dell neighborhood home while juggling her 9-year-old daughter’s schedule of school, gymnastics and piano lessons.
“I wanted the yard to look nice for him when he comes home,” she said. “He deserves to come home and not have to do anything. That’s the whole point of all this.”
She did some work on the yard herself. But “there’s just some things I couldn’t do myself. I don’t know how to do it, and it was too labor intensive.”
When she called the company, she wasn’t expecting a favor. Hilkey added that she’s usually the giving one and that she had to tell herself to be gracious about accepting the gift.
“I didn’t ask for a military discount. I didn’t say anything about the military. I just told them that it’s important that I get it done before this date because he’s coming home,” she said.
On Wednesday, GRO’s crews worked to repair a hole in Hilkey’s backyard by installing rolls of sod. They trimmed the edges of her yard. When she arrived home, she saw their work and learned they had even fixed her wooden fence gate.
“They went above and beyond,” she said. “I was so impressed.”
