MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — After a neighbor called the cops on 12-year-old Reggie Fields and his summer grass-cutting co-workers, his business has been booming because of the backlash.
The young entrepreneur runs Mr. Reggie Lawn Cutting Service and employs some of his friends in the neighborhood. On June 23, they were mowing the lawn of Lucille Holt-Colden in this Cleveland suburb.
Holt-Colden thought the kids were doing a good job, so she was especially surprised when a patrol car came up to her home.
Her next-door neighbors noticed the kids cutting a small section of their property and decided to call the police, Holt-Colden said on video she posted to her Facebook page. She called the situation “ridiculous.”
“Who does that?,” she said in the video. “I’m so glad you are out here doing something positive. You should not be getting the police called on you just because you’re cutting grass.”
She never identified the neighbor.
The two boys and two girls, one child as young as 9, were raking the freshly mowed grass off the sidewalk and Holt-Colden’s and her neighbor’s driveways when the police car arrived.
“They should be glad these kids are not out there breaking their car windows out,” Holt-Colden said in the video. “They should be glad the kids are not out there stealing their cars.”
Not mentioned: All of the young workers and Holt-Colden are black; the unnamed neighbor is white. While Maple Heights officers were called, they talked to both adults and did nothing to stop the cleanup.
Holt-Colden’s video has been viewed more than a half million times.
“I was nervous,” Reggie told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer on Friday. “I thought they were going to tell me I was in trouble. I just walked away to another lady’s house and cut their grass. I just walked away and acted like nothing was going on and back in my own world.”
Also on Friday while Reggie and friends were cutting Holt-Colden’s grass again, Reggie got a visit from a professional landscaping team, The Grass Guys of Twinsburg, Ohio, to learn more about lawn care, said his mom, Brandy Marie Fields. They outfitted him with a new blower to make cleanup quicker and showed him how to use a push mower that was another donation to Reggie’s summer business.
A GoFundMe page that Holt-Colden created Sunday, titled Reggie Boyz Lawn Service, already has raised $37,000 more than its $1,000 goal.
“Please don’t let small-minded, petty people ruin your spirit,” Robyn Anderson of Ames, Iowa, wrote Monday on the GoFundMe page. “You are a good kid with a good work ethic and a bright future. You can help change the world for the better.”
