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Hidden Heroes of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Apr 14, 2021

Cindy Breita and Ryan Laubach are making Keystone a safer place during the pandemic
Cindy Breita and Ryan Laubach are making Keystone a safer place during the pandemic

By Chad Jones, Keystone College Class of 2023

As Covid-19 made it considerably more difficult for the Keystone College community to interact, heroes from Sodexo, the international company that oversees the college’s facilities and dining services, made life better and safer for everyone.

Ryan Laubach is one of Sodexo’s heroes who has done a lot of work behind the scenes to help maintain a safe in-person experience. He is a part of the housekeeping and environmental services team. The bulk of his work is centered on maintaining campus buildings.

“We moved a lot of desks in and out of classrooms to meet social distancing guidelines,” said Ryan. “Measuring the classrooms to determine maximum capacity was hard work.”

Ryan and the team worked tirelessly to make sure the fall 2020-2021 semester got off to a great start. The preparatory efforts in the summer were not the end of the battle as more work was required throughout the course of 2020 and through the spring semester this year.

“After each class ends, we have to sanitize the classroom properly before the next class comes in,” Ryan explained. “Depending on the day or class, that may leave us with a quick time frame to clean everything in the room, so we had to be efficient.”

Ryan will be completing his sixth year working at the college. It is important to him that the atmosphere the Keystone community values does not diminish for any reason.

“I felt very welcomed when I first began working here,” Ryan said. “I love the family environment here and wanted to work as hard as possible to preserve it.”

Cindy Breita is also a hero from Sodexo who has done an extensive amount of work behind the scenes to make Keystone a safer place during the pandemic. She works as a part of the housekeeping team and her main focus is keeping the faculty offices clean and sanitized. Cindy has lived in Northeastern Pennsylvania for 64 years and enjoys every moment she can be on campus.

“My job is to make sure the faculty and staff can come on campus and work in a clean and safe environment,” said Cindy. “We have had many meetings on strategy and new techniques to sanitize the offices properly. “Keystone is my family. The students and faculty here are so respectful, and I want to do my part to keep everyone safe,” she said. “Many of my family members went to Keystone so it means a lot to me that I am able to work here and keep the tradition going.”

“Ryan and Cindy are great examples of employees from Sodexo, and from Keystone, who really care about doing their best to keep our campus community as safe as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic and at all other times as well.” said Sodexo General Manager John Gigliotti. “We really appreciate their efforts each and every day of the week.”

When trying to find either of heroes, they are not hard to spot. They are always wearing their best Keystone Giant gear and working extremely hard with a selfless attitude. As the pandemic begins to wind down, the battle is not yet over. It is still important to abide by all regulations and guidelines in place regarding Covid-19. The Keystone community and heroes from Sodexo are continuing their fight to keep the campus safe.