A 20-year-old TikTokker From Beaverton Introduced the World to Biohazard Clean-Ups
Jacob Suarez, better known as @BiggieClean on TikTok, suited up for hoarding muck-out.
Image: Courtesy of Jacob Suarez
Beaverton native Jacob Suarez's nearly 4 million TikTok fans don't mind it when he talks dirty to them—in fact, the dirtier the better.
Not, not that kind of dirty.
Suarez, 20, is a biohazard cleaner who works at his family's company, Bio-One PDX, which specializes in the gnarliest of decontamination services. They are the ones who get the call when the mess seems beyond impossible. An unplugged freezer, filled with rotten meat? An abandoned car lot covered with trash and drug paraphernalia? A blood-splattered crime scene? Suarez has seen them all, and then some.
It’s an unusual job, and Suarez found himself fielding the same questions over and over again—until he thought of a novel way of explaining himself.
“I got kind of tired of explaining it over and over, so I thought ‘What if I started posting videos of my jobs on TikTok and just talk about it there?’" he says. "That way, when people asked me, [I could say] ‘Oh, you can just go watch all my videos then you’ll understand.”
So he duct-taped his phone to his chest, recorded him and his crew shoveling thousands of pounds of trash from an old homeless camp into industrial garbage bags while explaining what they were doing, and posted it to his account, @BiggieClean.
Overnight, the video blew up.
Seven months later, that original video has over 1.6 million likes, nearly 8,000 comments, and over 10 million views.
Suarez diving into a client's crawl space he intends to clean up.
Image: Courtesy of Jacob Suarez
By the time Suarez began posting to TikTok, he had been cleaning up biohazards alongside his mom, aunt, uncle, and cousins for over three years. This job started as just a way to make money while getting to support his family's business, but now he has dreams of growing the business and eventually taking it over.
The job can be crappy (literally) but Suarez loves his job: “I really enjoy the hoarding muck-outs that don’t have like, feces, or liquids… If I don’t have to wear a hazmat suit and a respirator and I just get to throw stuff away, it’s so satisfying.”
It’s not all enjoyable, however, as the company has to take on the darker jobs of cleaning up crime or suicide scenes. They get calls from local police departments and victim or family advocates asking for Bio-One's help cleaning up the places where people have spent their last moments. He says these are the hardest jobs as “you’re stepping into a very traumatic situation, detached a little bit because you don’t know the person. But still, you know, you feel the pain for those that it affects.”
Suarez in the midst of a hoarding clean up.
Image: Courtesy of Jacob Suarez
In addition to the mental toll that these jobs take the physical tolls add up as they shovel thousands of pounds of trash a day while wearing a stuffy hazmat suit. “The worst is just like hoarding stuff to the ceiling, but it’s diapers and piss and urine and old expired food… Bugs, good lord, bugs are just the worst.”
Suarez says he hopes that his TikTok can bring more awareness and acceptance to hoarding disorder, depression, and other mental illnesses. "A lot of people, unfortunately, who are hoarders are too ashamed to get help because they don’t want to feel judged or they’re just embarrassed," he says. "And that’s just not what we’re about.”
