There’s nothing more important to Pacific Beach resident Caryn Blanton than investing in her community. With 15 years of community service under her belt, Blanton has worked with nonprofits like San Diego Workforce Partnership, focused on job training programs, and started her own nonprofit called the Pacific Beach Street Guardians, hiring homeless neighbors to help with street cleaning as well as church and school custodial work. Now, Blanton aims to serve her neighbors as well with her new business, Simply Service. “Community service is what I’m best at,” said Blanton. “It’s everything to me.”
After three years of working with roughly 60 homeless community members, Blanton had to close the Pacific Beach Street Guardians business last March, being a one-woman show for so long and not making enough funds to stay afloat. Blanton says Simply Service bloomed out of her desperate desire to do whatever she could to stay in touch with the community. “Pretty much whatever anybody doesn’t want to do, I will step in,” said Blanton of Simply Service, which she launched this past December. “Honestly, it’s been amazing. I started out mostly decorating Christmas trees and present wrapping, but now I help with people’s bookkeeping, social media management, and I have two surfboards in my garage right now that I need to take in for repairs. Every day is something totally different.”
It’s only been six weeks that Blanton has been running Simply Service full time, but she’s currently working for eight clients at a time each week. Whether it’s dog sitting, organizing moving boxes, event planning or notarizing official documents, Simply Service has very few tasks, and location, limitations. While most of Blanton’s clients so far have been in the PB and Point Loma areas, she’s also begun taking on tasks for clients as far as Los Angeles — for a travel fee, of course.
“It’s random and crazy and I’m having a great time doing it,” said Blanton. She added: “Part of the reason I thought this business would work is because of the reputation and trust I built with the community working with the PB Street Guardians. I work with people’s tax info and have keys to their apartments. That’s not something you just hand over to someone who rolled into town. I’m an actual neighbor to a lot of these people and that’s why I thought Simply Service would be a good vehicle for my mission.”
Blanton’s “mission” is to use Simply Service as a way to still give back to the community that still owns her heart: the homeless.
“My passion is to help my neighbors, but especially those who are experiencing homelessness, so I’m taking a percentage of my fees and putting it back into places that are working to help those groups at a systemic level,” said Blanton, who hopes the business will serve as a bridge between “people who have something and people who don’t.”
“Every time one of my clients gets their invoice, I do a breakdown so they can see how much money will go toward helping those who need it,” Blanton added. “I think that’s also a little eye-opening for people.”
Simply service charges an introductory sum of $20 per hour for services and an additional fee for traveling distances further than 15 miles. To contact Blanton to utilize Simply Service, visit simplyservicesd.com.