EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Hardhat not included

You know how on every episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Ty and Co wrangle up an army of local volunteers who descend on some lucky family's house like a swarm of blue-shirted locust?  These are magic locust, BTW, because instead of leaving ruined farmland behind, they leave a brand new house in their wake.

I'll bet you get to keep the blue shirt if you're an EMHO volunteer because it'd be more trouble than it's worth trying to collect them and wash them and store the blue shirts every week.   But here's what I've been wondering:  do you get to keep the white hardhat?  Seriously, I want to know.  Do the volunteers hand the hardhats in at the end of the week for disinfection and de-lousing so they can be used by the next horde of volunteers?  Or do they get to keep them as a memento of their time helping out the EMHO crew?  I'd like to think the volunteers get to keep them, and that maybe Ty and the designers sign a few of the hats as well.  You never know, though.  Those hats can't be cheap.

So if anybody out there has contributed to Extreme Makeover Home Edition, or knows a guy who knows a guy who was a volunteer, please let us know:  did you get to keep the hardhat? 

I tell ya, these are the kinds of questions that wake me up in the middle of the night.

--Dave Campbell

Comments

[GoodScout]

They return the hard hats. They are cleaned, sterilized and rebagged for use on future builds. The part that snaps into the shell that actually sits on your head is not reused.

In reality, about 50% of the workers forget to return them and go home with them. The producers try and tell the cast not to autograph the hats, because it discourages people from returning, but in reality the cast signs them all the time.

[David D. Campbell]

Thank you GoodScout! Mystery solved.

[jennibec]

We were able to take our hard hats...(from just this past week!) And yes...we keep the shirts :) I don't think they would want to have that smell with them!! You only get one blue shirt and have to wear it at all times that you are at the house...