Damage Control Hepatitis Scare A Disaster For Players And Spectators Owner, But He’s Proud Of His Response

Last weekend, H.T. Higgins packed up his family and left town.

Higgins, the 37-year-old owner of Players and Spectators, left behind his restaurant and the ongoing media buzz about hepatitis A. He wanted, for just two days, to escape the last two months. He wanted to forget the curses hurled at his managers, and the taunts endured by his two young daughters.

“People were saying to my children, ‘Your daddy’s business is going broke,’ ” said Higgins, who found out on Jan. 10 that one of his employees had hepatitis A.

Standing in his empty restaurant the following week, he wondered if it might be true.

Still, Higgins is fighting his way back, determined that he did the right thing and that his efforts will be rewarded. Ten weeks after the Spokane Regional Health District publicly announced that four of his employees might have exposed as many as 20,000 people to the disease, Higgins continues to challenge other restaurants to vaccinate their employees. Vaccinating his own staff and immunizing thousands of exposed patrons has cost Higgins more than $80,000 so far.

His challenge has won the praise of county health officials, who now dub him a “public health hero.” But others, including the president-elect of the Washington Restaurant Association, blame him for strengthening the erroneous belief that hepatitis A is primarily a food-service problem.

“I don’t want to do anything to diminish the problem, or what (county health officer) Kim Thorburn is doing,” said restaurant association president-elect Dave Hooke, the owner of Senor Froggy Mexican Foods restaurants, “but there still has not been a single (proven) transmission between a restaurant employee and a customer.”

In reality, Hooke said, spending thousands of dollars to vaccinate restaurant employees is more of a public relations investment than anything else.

“Statistically,” he said, “it’s not helping the problem.”

County health officials admit there hasn’t been a single confirmed case of a person acquiring the disease from eating out. Then again, Dr. Thorburn said, the cause of the majority of hepatitis A cases is never determined.

There remains wide disagreement, even among health agencies, on how to best deal with Spokane’s growing hepatitis A caseload.

But Higgins isn’t second guessing himself. And he has no regrets. “Whenever you do the right thing, the rest will take care of itself,” he said. “My approach has been that I want to get the positives out of this situation.”

A public hepatitis A announcement can mean staggering financial loses for a restaurant. In most cases, Hooke said, the best response is to let it pass, and not keep talking about it.

Higgins did just the opposite, he said, and he probably lost more money because of it.

“He took responsibility,” Hooke said, “and kept it in the press.”

Higgins said he isn’t sure how much money he lost from the hepatitis A incident.

“We’re in the process of determining that,” he said. Some of the loss, he said, will be recovered thanks to food-borne illness insurance.

The public learned about the hepatitis A exposure at Players and Spectators on Jan. 11.

“The magnitude of it didn’t hit me at that point,” he said. The restaurant was full that Saturday night and customers were waiting more than an hour for a table.

One week later, on another Saturday, just five tables were filled.

“That’s when it really hit me,” Higgins said. “All of a sudden, nobody was here. It was like a morgue.”

Higgins had just spent $2 million to remodel the building, and fulfill his dream of creating a “supermarket” of sports centers, complete with 24 bowling lanes, basketball hoops, a card room and restaurant.

The facility opened in May, but business was less than he had expected. Higgins faced the challenge of creating a new image for the restaurant, which had been tarnished by violence and crime in the past.

“I didn’t realize the depth of our image as a place not to bring a family or children, or to come after dark,” he said.

By September, business began to grow.

“We had a great December,” he said. “I was really excited the first week of January.”

Then came the health district announcement that one of his restaurant’s food handlers had hepatitis A.

“All of a sudden, you lose 70 percent of your income,” he said. “My management people were afraid we weren’t going to make payroll. All of this work, and now it’s gone. It’s over.”

Higgins sent his managers to help at the county health district office. The seriousness of the situation hit them when they saw the lines of people stretching out the door into the cold.

“These people were out there freezing,” Higgins said. “Managers got verbally abused. People held us responsible.”

Higgins’s wife finally stopped reading the newspaper and watching the local television news, he said.

Higgins decided to have every employee, including the bowling mechanic, janitors and bookkeepers, vaccinated against hepatitis A.

He also installed six new hand-washing sinks, implemented a documented hourly hand-washing policy for kitchen workers and required them to wear gloves.

The memories of those terrifying early weeks still bring the former football coach close to tears.

But despite everything, he said, some of memories are good.

“You find out a lot of people really care,” he said. “The bowling guys were really supportive. Every league showed up that next week. The casino guests kept coming.”

And restaurant owners began responding to his challenge.

So far, 147 restaurants have committed to vaccinate all of their workers. All major grocery store chains have done the same, said Thorburn, of the health district.

Despite his own losses, Higgins feels good about what was achieved - and optimistic about the future.

During a weekday lunch hour last week, 68 cars sat in his parking lot. Weekday crowds are about 80 percent of what they were before the hepatitis announcement, he said. Weekends are up to 90 percent of before.

Hooke believes Higgins would have bounced back sooner had he not kept talking about hepatitis A.

But Higgins is glad he did.

“There’s always a reason why,” Higgins said, sipping coffee in a padded purple booth, and scanning his half-filled restaurant.

“It’s been one heck of a journey,” he said, “but we’ve got customers, and my people are still employed.

“I think we’re going to make it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)