By Eddie Wooten
The work Jeff Pinckney had been hired to lead for Aruza Pest Control just three months earlier in 2024 would get handled another way.
The first sergeant with an Army National Guard unit, a retired U.S. Army service member with 33 years of service, answered the call to respond in the North Carolina mountains.
Hurricane Helene, which had made landfall in Florida, left historic destruction over western North Carolina and parts of Tennessee as it moved through as a tropical storm.
"We cut down trees, helped people out of their houses, got trees off vehicles," Pinckney says of his unit's work in hard-hit Swannanoa. "And then about 2½ weeks after we got there, we started to hand out food and water."
Weeks of providing help turned into months. All the while, Aruza stood by its new hire, who was leading relief after what one mountain town leader called "a 1,000-year event. A geological event."
“He had to go do what he had to do," Aruza CEO Joshua Langdon says of Pinckney, "and we had to do what we had to do to take care of him.”
Pinckney, a branch manager in Greensboro, is among a sizable number of veterans who work for the Charlotte-based company, located in a state with the nation’s ninth-highest population of former service members.
"The emotional toll people have gone through over the last 25 years of the country being at war: We just want to make sure these people understand they're not forgotten," says Aruza's Christopher Pickar, a regional manager and a retired U.S. Army service member and government contractor. "The work they did is not in vain, and we do care about each person individually."
Working, and living, by core values
Pinckney is one of the veterans who are key members of Aruza’s workforce. Aruza, whose software partner, FieldRoutes, is part of ServiceTitan, operates 11 locations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas.
While Aruza embraces technology, Langdon says human relationships are what matter most, "that you're doing the right thing for people." To achieve that, Langdon says, he and his employees are anchored around five core values—gratitude, humility, accountability, kindness, and integrity.
And those values are part of why Pickar sees former service members as such important colleagues in a pest control company aiming to grow from $50 million in revenue to $150 million over the next four years.
"Growth for us is finding the right people who want to be part of our culture," Pickar says, "and then building our customer base around our employees.”
That means employees like Pinckney and five other veterans who work for Aruza in the Greensboro branch.
"When somebody is in the military, they learn a set of core values, and they live by those core values every single second of the day, 24/7, while they're in," Pickar says. "They've already proven they can work well with others. They're good at communication. They're good at shifting on their feet. And they can think outside the box. I mean, those things alone are crucial to our industry.
“They're always going to be on time,” he adds. “You don't have to worry about them calling out sick. They're going to give 100% every single second of the day.”
Above: Jeff Pinckney, a 33-year veteran of service and an Aruza Pest Control branch manager.
Hired as a branch manager for Aruza in June 2024, Pinckney is parlaying his skills learned in the military to lead service managers and technicians and to serve customers.
"The new core values we have go together with the same thing for the core of the military," Pinckney says. "A lot of it has to do with loyalty. We have accountability, which is really big in the military."
Pickar sees two aspects that make Pinckney, whom he hired, effective.
"He's got a super-soft side,” Pickar says. “And then he's got his first sergeant side, and he really makes that work well on being able to mentor, lead, and teach people."
The United States was home to about 18 million veterans in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Texas, Florida, and California all have more than 1 million residents who served in the military, and North Carolina ranked ninth with nearly 630,000.
The unemployment rate for all veterans in 2024 totaled 3.0%, or about 250,000 people. The BLS found that 60% of those without jobs were ages 25-54.
The National Pest Management Association, through its Workforce Development Military Hiring Program featuring SkillBridge Partnerships and veteran community support through PestVets, works to promote the industry to veterans, spouses, and active-duty members but also to educate its members on ways to recruit and hire former service members.
"Because of the structured way pest control companies approach jobs, they have an alignment and similarity with serving the community but in a different way or different capacity, making sure that everyone's safe," says Liz Bicer, NPMA director of workforce development. "And that's a typical role within our military.”
In addition, NPMA supports member companies in becoming an approved SkillBridge Partner of the U.S. Department of Defense. Service members approaching a transition from active duty to a civilian career can be granted up to 180 days to focus on training full-time with approved industry partners. Service members continue to receive military salary and benefits, alleviating financial burden on the training employer, and employers who hire the trainees can earn tax credits.
"Many of the qualities or the competencies we're looking for—the leadership, project management, communication, diving into the unknown and sorting it out and then working with the team to resolve—align perfectly with our industry,” Bicer says.
Bicer encourages pest control companies to consider ways they can demonstrate their military-readiness to hire veterans, such as:
Regularly communicating to employees that their company is seeking veterans and encouraging them to apply.
Using connections formed by veterans in the company to entice applications by other veterans and serve as mentors on the job.
Demonstrating a potential career path for veterans, who are accustomed to such structure in the military.
Partnering with a PestVets State Unit, especially if the company does not have veterans on their team yet.
Placing an American flag on uniforms or wearing special shirts to mark Veterans Day.
Showing appreciation, perhaps through thank-you notes or gift baskets, for veterans in the company and their families.
‘We’re very grateful’
A stalled front had already dumped 5-7 inches of rain on North Carolina before Helene's arrival, and by the end of the evening on Sept. 27, 2024, a large section of the Tarheel State accumulated 12-20 inches in just two days.
After spending time assisting with relief in Swannanoa, Pinckney moved over to Chimney Rock, where a 30-foot wall of water had nearly wiped away the community on the Broad River.
"It was horrible," Pinckney says. "It was worse than Swannanoa. Everything over there was destroyed."
Though he was new to his job with Aruza, the company never hesitated to allow Pinckney to not just serve his state but to respond in an emergency, to help people in need.
"We have a branch in Asheville," Langdon says. "A lot of our people were affected. Our customers were affected. I have family up there; several of us have family up there. That was a devastating event.
"When Jeff was called up, it didn’t matter how long. He could still be gone, and we’d still be supporting him. "
After he returned from relief work during Helene, Pinckney continued as a National Guard service member until finally retiring in September 2025, giving him 33 years of service. To Langdon’s point, Pinckney continued to feel support as the company put “the right person” in his place during absences to take part in National Guard drills.
"You could be gone for three weeks and not have to worry about your company, about your branch," Pinckney says, "because they put the right people in the right place."
Above: Aruza Pest Control, based in Charlotte, NC, operates 11 locations in four states.
Outside of the company, Aruza recently made an impact on Sean Reeves, a Marine infantry rifleman and Purple Heart recipient whose home in King, NC, about 40 miles northwest of Pinckney’s Greensboro branch, was renovated as part of a Purple Heart Homes project in collaboration with the "Military Makeover" TV show. Service Titan, in support of Aruza Pest Control through its Power the Nation campaign, is also offering support for Purple Heart Homes.
Aruza provided a thorough inspection of the home, resolved an issue with fire ants, and installed termite bait stations around the home.
During a deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, Reeves survived an IED blast and an ambush but sustained a traumatic brain injury and three gunshot wounds. Reeves, who lives in King with his partner, Cecilia, served until retiring from the military in 2011.
"We’re very grateful for everything he’s done and everything all of our veterans do," Langdon says.
Above: Joshua Langdon, CEO of Aruza Pest Control.
The project made an impact on Pinckney.
"It feels awesome just because I am a veteran," Pinckney says. "If I was hurt, I would hope someone like that would help me out."
Pickar remembers his own experience when he retired after nine years of service—with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, NC, in Afghanistan and then as a government contractor in Iraq—when strong programs that helped military members transition to other careers weren’t prominent.
"The skill sets I had as airborne infantry really didn’t transcend into the civilian world at all," Pickar says.
And that makes Aruza Pest Control's hiring of veterans, including Pickar and Pinckney, and support of former service members in the community all the more meaningful.
“We’re all sitting here benefiting from the sacrifices they made, and are still making, at home and abroad," Langdon says. "That is a big deal to show gratitude for what they’ve done.”
