WATERLOO, N.Y. — At a spectacular lakeside home along Seneca Lake, a couple of driveways down from Belhurst Castle, Chuck Hinkel meets his newest client; the operator of a vacation property with a need for Chuck's line of service.
Sprawled across the front room of the home sit duffel bags full of laundry. Chuck grabs one and heads to his Laundry Depot van.
"This part of our operation's a new difference maker," says Hinkel, owner of the Laundry Depot, a small laundry chain that includes two laundromats in Geneva and Waterloo. "We're growing by reaching into a market that's not had this kind of service."
Hinkel says the idea of washing and drying linens and the like was a natural progression of his business plan. What started with a handful of properties is spreading wildly across the Finger Lakes, with more than 120 on the client list, and counting.
And Hinkel enjoys the drives down Routes 14 and 96 for pickups.
"We're a small business, but you need to keep growing," said Hinkel, a network television sports contractor and former Rochester Red Wings marketing manager who blossomed late as an entrepreneur.
His flagship is an old train station in Waterloo that's been a neighborhood laundromat for generations. A Finger Lakes Railway freighter rolls by every day at noon, just steps from its back door.
Hinkel remodeled every inch of the place, with state-of-the-art equipment, WiFi, televisions and even a lounge where people can feel at home doing one of their weekly chores.
“It’s clean. Everything works,” said one of the regular customers as she filled a dryer full of socks and sheets.
Chuck trusts his regulars so much he even leaves his laundromats open unstaffed.
“We’ll small-town community — you’d figure someone wouldn’t treat your business bad," said another customer.
That all changed in January when a man broke into Chuck’s laundromat to take cash.
The man drilled into the change maker. He even went out back to the vacuum to try to steal money there. A video security system captured his image as he lowered a scarf to wipe his nose.
Police later arrested Thomas Rath and they say he was charged with felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor possession of burglary tools.
The episode cost Chuck $500 in repairs.
A judge released Hart on the state's new bail reforms that allow non-violent felony and all misdemeanor crime suspects to be freed without bail.
"I've always been in favor of bail reform," Hinkel said. "But that whole thing, that got me rethinking."
Staff says it had to work hard since the suspect's arrest to convince customers they still have a safe place to do their laundry
"When they feel unsafe to come in; that's not that great," said Vicki Van Horn, who manages the Waterloo laundromat.
Chuck put his money where his mouth is after police caught the suspect.
"You know I really wasn’t a person that was just looking to complain, that I wanted to be part of a solution," said Hinkel.
Once the cops caught the suspect, Chuck found out that the man accused in the crime was homeless and had told the courts he'd had his phone stolen. Confidence was low that Hart would show for his next court appearance. He did not.
Hinkel also learned Hart had failed to show for court appearances in criminal cases before and after he'd allegedly tried to take from the laundromat.
"There’s really no repercussions for any of their actions that they’re doing," Hinkel said.
The people who run small businesses in towns like Geneva and Waterloo don’t feel like they’re parts of the conversation when it comes to criminal justice reform in New York and most aren’t as fortunate as Chuck who is a year and a half straight into raising profits for this small laundromat chain. He just wants there to be a conversation about how bail reform should move forward.
"There's a lot more to it than just you know the right or left," Hinkel said. "Everybody thinks about you're letting people out or we don't want to put people in just because people can't afford bail. But there goes a lot into the judges in the smaller towns and how they handle situations."
Bail reform remains one of the lead issues keeping New York state's budget from being passed. Reforms the state's Democratic leaders fought generations for are now targets for recalibration by the Hochul administration.
Most who want bail reform to stay as it is quote a Times Union of Albany study done in the first year of the reforms. It reviewed 100,000 cases across the state. It found that 2% of those led to a re-arrest for a violent felony involving a gun. One in five of the cases studied led to a re-arrest of any kind.
Another snapshot of that study, offered by a former executive DA from the Queens District Attorney's Office, found first-time offenders accused of minor crimes and non-violent felony offenders, where bail is rarely set, were included in that study.
And among the 594 people in the sample with a prior violent felony office, a third were released and 58% of those people were arrested again before their case was completed.
It also found of the defendants arrested for burglaries in that study, 89% had a prior case. Still, nearly three-quarters of those accused were released by bail reforms. Fifty-five percent were arrested again before their case was pending.
A state legislator has asked Hinkel to share his story in communities across the state.
"You know, I do think there need to be changes, but I also think there needs to be education on what that bill (bail reform) is and what goes into it," Hinkel said.