A groundskeeper does many things, such as mowing grass, picking up trash and raking leaves before students come to the Cosumnes River College campus.

Groundskeeper Todd Zurfluh has been working as a Los Rios Community College District groundskeeper for almost 25 years and recently got a full-time job on the CRC campus.

In recounting his work history, Zurfluh said he loves working as a groundskeeper.

“I’ve done American River, I’ve done Folsom Lake, I’ve done El Dorado, I’ve done Sac City,” Zurfluh said.

Upon speaking about his love for his profession, Zurfluh mentioned that he started his job at the age of 25, making him the youngest hire at the time.

“I’ve done all of them and I was the youngest one when I was hired because everyone else was like, older people that were getting hired,” Zurfluh said.

Head Groundskeeper Michael Cody said he worked with Zurfluh for the LRCCD a couple of times before he got the campus full-time job.

“I think he’s qualified to do a lot of things,” Cody said. “He’s a really good worker, he has a lot of knowledge, one of our best hires in the district. That’s all I can say about that.”

Cody said that Zurfluh goes above and beyond in his work and compared him to other groundskeepers.

“You get some people that like to talk a lot, not get work done, but he’s not like that. He likes to work, he likes to come into work and comes in early,” Cody said.

Trevor Rohrbach, a groundskeeper colleague of Zurfluh who’s worked with him for over three years, said Zurfluh’s happiness and joy for his work changed the mood of their work days.

“He’s a real positive guy, he’s always kind of happy, he’s never really down in the dumps which makes working with him super cool because when you work with somebody who’s happy, it makes the day go by a lot quicker,” Rohrbach said.

Rohrbach said he thinks the LRCCD is lucky to have Zurfluh because of how much he loves his job.

Rohrbach continued to talk about how groundskeepers and even the custodial staff get overlooked or undervalued by their profession.

“A lot of people come here and don’t realize that a lot of work goes into the campus, just for people to come here and you know, function safely and there’s a lot of unsung and unseen people who do it,” Rohrbach said. “But you know, it’s nice when people praise us because not many people care.”

Zurfluh said that there’s been a lot of obstacles in his life that had affected him greatly, one of them being the pandemic.

“We were only working one day a week, but we’re all staggered,” Zurfluh said. “We weren’t here with our buddies, we were just by ourselves.”