It’s impossible to miss Kat Herrera in the field with her hot pink hair and matching hot pink Doc Martens — her battle uniform against the various pests plaguing Los Angeles homes. Her work truck, “The Beast,” is wrapped in the same pink.
A single mom to two sons, Herrera has gone through hell and back to get to where she is now: someone her clients call a “she-ro,” a beloved community figure. Her sunny disposition and kind personality shines through in how she calls her team and clients her family. The hot pink isn’t just her favorite color, it’s a visual representation of the mark she has made on the pest control industry, which is “otherwise bland” and very male-dominated, she says.
She was introduced to the field after becoming homeless, but Herrera’s story isn’t just about survival, it’s about resilience and her determination to rise above. “I’ve been a widow for 31 years and I raised two sons on my own. One of the reasons I became an exterminator, which is not very female-friendly, was because I had become homeless. So I became an exterminator and I fell in love with it,” she explained.
In 2009, Herrera was on the Discovery Channel’s “Verminators” Season Two as the show’s lone female technician through her former job at a bigger pest control company. She broke off and started her own company in 2010 with the desire to change the social stigma of the pest control industry and carve out her own path in life.
Herrera shared stories about her encounters with people who would turn her away at the door because she wasn’t a man like they expected, but she persevered because she knew that she could do good work. Her company grew mainly through word of mouth from satisfied customers and she’s never compromised on embracing her femininity — as you can see through her iconic hot pink everything. Now, her clients call her a “she-ro.”
“The profession I’ve chosen is a labor of love. You’re able to go out and help people sleep better at night and find resolutions for problems,” she says. That’s why she named her company “Kat’s Pest Solutions,” rather than “Control.”
Kat’s Pest Solutions is based in Alhambra, but the team goes out as far as the Pacific Palisades to do work. Herrera says they lost all of their clients in the Palisades after the fires, but more importantly, it feels like they lost family. “It’s not just customers or clients, it’s an extended family. I just cried and cried and cried because it hurt me so much just to know the displacement that everybody felt. It wasn’t until later on that I realized, ‘Oh wow, we lost them as clients.’” Her team is ready to do whatever it takes to help their community, she says.
Visit Kat’s Pest Solutions at katspestsolutions.com.
Office Hours: 7:30 am – 5 pm Monday-Friday
8 am – 12 pm Saturday
Closed Sunday
Service Hours: 8 am – 5 pm Monday-Friday
8 am – 12 pm Saturday
Closed Sunday
Phone: (877) 528-5287
Call for a free inspection!
