She takes out her metallic chakra pendulum and moves it back and forth. The pendulum is her instrument to help ghosts around campus cross over.

“I will say, ‘Identities are you there? I want you to go to the light,’” she said. “I don’t see them. I feel them with me and help them cross over.”

Her name is Carol Schawo and she has worked at WTAMU as a janitor for 32 years. She can be found everyday in the JBK cleaning very meticulously, but always with a smile on her face.

“She is always happy and full of energy,” Kyle Baker, Music Performance major and worker at the JBK coffee shop said. “She is full of energy even when she busts her butt every day.”

Carol explains that she likes her job most of the time and that currently she is going through an “efficiency thing” in which she gets her job done faster.

“We’ve been short-handed so I dust and sweep too and still get done before three,” she said. “It is not my job to clean the tables, but I want them to look better.”

Deniase King, a co-worker and friend, explains that Carol is “picky at work” and does her job with extreme dedication, especially considering the size of the JBK. “This is no small [place],” she said. “People eat drink – people stay here.”

Dr. De’Arno De’Armond, assistant professor of Marketing and Finance, has worked at WT for 10 years and said he has always seen Carol work hard and for extra time.

“[Carol] works so hard on things people take for granted,” he said.

He remembers a particular day in which Carol was concerned that she did not have enough time to clean the outside windows of the Class•room Center in preparation for Homecoming and the Centen•nial Convocation.

“Carol’s concern for the beauty of our building really hit home with me in that she cares about how the place looks, how it smells, how it is perceived by not only our current students, but potential future ones as well,” De´Armond said in his nomination to Carol. “In many cases, Carol may understand more about retention than many of us.”

This inspired him to nominate Carol as Outstanding Staff Supporter this year, an award which Carol won.

This award is very meaningful for Carol. She said she is not used to receiving recognition and praise.

“I cried because I am not used to it. I wasn’t honored much growing up,” she said. “It is nice that someone recognized that in me, that I work so hard.”

Even though she enjoys her job, her ultimate dream is to have a healing facility. In 1999, she got her massage therapist license and she wishes she could practice more often so she can help and heal people.

“I am a child of a light,” she stated. “I have this gift. I was told I am a pure spirit and when someone is not, I know it.”

For Carol, everything around everyone is about energy and attraction.

“Your computer is in your solar plexus in stomach,” she explained. “Some people are toxic and get your energy.”

She also explained that healing works only if the person believes in it. Some, however, do not believe this works. She is aware, but does not care about what others think.

“A lot worry about me that know me, but they don´t know my gift,” she said. “Some people are not meant to understand, it is rare that people can get on my level and understand me.”

Carol thinks that Deniase understands her better than other people. They have known each other for four years, but it is only in the past year that their relationship transformed into friendship. Deniase believes in Carol´s gift and said that unlike others, her gift is real.

“A lot use it as a gimmick to make money,” Deniase said. “Carol doesn’t do that.”

Natalia Rodriguez, a Wildlife Biology major, works at the coffee shop located at the JBK. She won a trip to Turkey thanks to an essay she wrote for WT Readership last year and she thinks that Carol gave her good luck.

”She gave me that good luck I guess I needed to win the trip and stuff,” she said. “But even if that had nothing to do with me winning the trip, at least it had to do with the fact that it gave me confidence and security in myself before they announced the winners for the trip.”

Carol said she tries to enjoy her life to the fullest and states that something that she dislikes is superficiality.

“I want to be as real as I am, I don’t want people to change me,” she said. “I am happy being myself.”