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By LARRY LOCKHART
News Editor
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Phillip Rakoci never really intended to get into the business of hanging Christmas lights. It might be more accurate to say that the business just happened to him.
Regardless, he's in the business now, lighting up the lives of countless people in Casa Grande and south-central Arizona. Not only will he and his crews illuminate between 50 and 100 homes this year, he spent nearly a week preparing the light display at Tempe Town Lake.
He has three, sometimes four, crews working for his business, Outdoor Illuminations (www.besthunglights.net). As of midday Thursday, they already had put up lights at 32 houses since starting a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. They will work until a week or 10 days before Christmas.
"The way I got started was that a friend of mine owned a mobile auto detailing business," said Rakoci, whom many people know as the guy who brings snakes and spiders to schools through his Desert Wildlife Presentations business. "He had some customers ask if he could hang Christmas lights. He sold the business to my brother and moved to Tucson, and some of the people called my brother and asked if he'd hang lights. He gave them my name because I'd helped him a few times.
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No time for trim-a-tree?
Outdoor Illuminations can be reached online at www.besthunglights.net. The company’s three to four crews will work up to 10 days before Christmas.
"By about 1999 or 2000, I had enough people calling that I had to decide if there were enough people that it could be a business."
Deciding there were indeed enough such people, Rakoci decided to switch businesses for a couple of months around the holidays, giving up the Desert Wildlife Presentations appearances in favor of doing Christmas lights.
A number of people in the area hang holiday lights for pay, from landscaping companies to the neighborhood handyman. Rakoci said he isn't sure how many such services are operating in and near Casa Grande.
"We don't have a Christmas lighting convention," he said. "You go online and see there's even franchises you can buy.
"I don't have any employees because you can't keep them busy all year. I have people who subcontract for me. They call me up and ask if they can do some work."
Tempe Town Lake is Rakoci's biggest project. He's done the lighting there for the last three years.
"This year it only took five or six people about a week," he said. "They've got 14 trees in the amphitheater that blink on and off in time with the music. It's computer-generated, with maybe 20,000 lights on those trees that blink on and off at various times. It's big; it's a fun thing." But for residential customers, who provide the bulk of his work, Rakoci has depended on friends telling friends.
"It's just word of mouth," he said. "People see your work and like it, and they tell someone else. Last year we did 52 houses. Most were here in Casa Grande, but we did some in Chandler and Apache Junction.
"There are some companies out there that charge like $3,000 to do a house, but I don't have any houses that are even half that."
That seems to be the case in some affluent suburbs in the Valley, where holiday decorating expense could cost as much as feeding a small Third World country. Rakoci prefers working on a smaller scale, doing affordable decorating for working families in Pinal County, where two-story houses are more common than they used to be.
"We try to stay reasonable, so the average guy can afford it," he said. "I would say the average house here would be around $200 to $500. It depends. Some people want icicles, some want their whole back yard (decorated).
"Some people supply their own lights, and sometimes we do. Some people will say, 'I've got 20 boxes of icicle lights, what can you do with them?' I'm not in the business of selling Christmas lights. I get a good deal and pass it along.
"I have one person who I'm going back to his house for the third time this year. They keep wanting to add things."
Packing the most work possible into a relatively short time is one of the trickiest aspects of the business. Rakoci said most people want their lights done within a week after Thanksgiving, and there's simply no way he can do up to 100 houses in a week or 10 days. So he had his crews hanging lights a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, just not turning them on yet.
"The next day (after Thanksgiving), I went out and set all the timers and turned them on," he said. "The latest we've done it was four days before Christmas."
There are drawbacks to being known as the Christmas light hanging guy, Rakoci said. Such as other members of the Sunrise Optimist Club assuming that he should chair their efforts for the city's Electric Light Parade tonight.
The less-fun side of the job is spending most of January going around and taking lights down. And, of course, hanging your own Christmas lights - and taking them down - takes a back seat to the jobs you're being paid to do.
"By the time I get to my own lights, I'm kind of tired of it," Rakoci said. "One year my wife told me she wouldn't take the Christmas tree down until I took the lights down. I won. It was June; we were having a party and needed that wall (where the Christmas tree stood)."
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