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The seeds of RYMEK Enterprises, Inc. were planted late in the 1980's when
the husband-and-wife team of Nolan Isidro Pidor, MBA (Asian Institute of Management),
and Emma Pagunsan Pidor, BSN, RN (Velez College of Nursing), started a business
under the name Emma's Nurses, Inc. based in Bergen County, New Jersey. Emma's
Nurses, Inc. was recruiting nurses from the Philippines and the Middle East on
the strength of its own Attestation, a Department of Labor authorization to recruit
foreign workers. At that time, the nurses were coming to the US under the INS'
H1A program for nurses.
In the mid 1990's, however, the H1A program was phased out by the INS due to the growing over-supply of nurses in the country. Recruitment literally was stopped dead in its tracks and by 1997, as the last of the petition beneficiaries entered the US, the company suspended operations.
In late 1999, the winds of change began to rear its ugly head. Signs of an impending
nursing shortage started to show. Statistics presented a scary picture of what
the immediate and long-term future held. The symptoms were indeed everywhere
for everyone to see but most facilities dismissed them as more illusion than
reality. As a matter of fact, as late as the first half of 2000, US facilities
were still not willing to subsidize the expenses incurred by the foreign nurses
in their quest for US placement. The nurses who nevertheless signed for US recruitment
ended up paying their own way to American employment. The facilities that agreed
to sponsor the nurses at that time got a very good deal for themselves.
The symptoms did not escape the sharp eyes of Nolan Pidor, who was then a full-time
real estate professional in Bergen County whose clientele included nurses. He
had sensed something was brewing from his conversations with his clients. Emma
P. Pidor, herself an RN, and working in a sub-acute care setting, was also seeing
something new in the work environment: facilities were heavily understaffed and
nurses were overworked. In a memorable moment in late December 1999, while attending
the wake of another nurse's deceased father, Nolan and Emma reached a decision
- the time had indeed come. This was a call for action.
The couple answered the call by re-establishing their old enterprise under
the new name RYMEK Enterprises, Inc., a name coined to properly give credit to
the couple's four children who have been, and continue to be, the couple's major
interest in life: Ryan,
Mykie, Emma Mae
and Karen.
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