Hotel Worker: I Was Fired, Blizzard Left Me Stuck at Home

A Leesburg, Virginia, woman said she lost her job because of the historic snow that fell on Jan. 23-24.

Dinora Santos Lopez worked as a housekeeper at the Hampton Inn and Suites, on Fort Evans Road, in Leesburg, Virginia. During Saturday, on the weekend of the blizzard, the hotel told her to be on stand-by for a call, in case they needed her to come in to work.

Lopez fell down trying to clear the steps of her house, and her subdivision had not been cleared of snow that was still falling. She told the hotel she couldn’t get out of her neighborhood, because it had yet to be plowed.

"They told her that there were people in the hotel with big trucks that would come and pick her up," said an interpreter for Lopez.

So, she waited all day Saturday but never received a call. On Sunday, her son called the hotel and found out the devastating news.

“She told my son, I'm sorry, but she's left without a job now,” Lopez said through the interpreter.

Lopez had worked at Hampton Inn Suites for 12 years despite having a chronically ill husband and problems with her knees. She said she’d never called in sick, nor have there ever been complaints about her work.

She pleaded her case to the hotel.

The woman at the hotel responded, “She said she's a good employee but I can't do anything for her.”

News4 contacted Hampton Inn and Suites to respond to the situation. They said that they were not commenting on Lopez's situation.

Lopez is resigned to the fact that she's out of a job, but she said she's still owed vacation pay, which she will now desperately need. She said there are other reasons for her coming forward.

“She said I wish the hotel would appreciate the people they have there more," the interpreter said for Lopez.

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