Charlie's Angel

Charlie's Angels is breaking up.

Not the Hollywood trio of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, but Naples' own Charlie's Angels Plumbing. Charlie, in this case, is Charlie Morrison, longtime owner of the business on Enterprise Avenue and father of the three "angels" — Bethany, Brittany and Alaura.

The sisters don't drive tanks, fire submachine guns or investigate crimes like the fictional private eyes of the big screen, but they do know their way around a pipe wrench and teflon tape and have fixed some perplexing plumbing problems.

Now one of the Naples angels is taking flight.

After a decade in the family business, Alaura, 27, is trading in her tool belt for a diaper bag. She recently gave birth to her fourth child and wants to spend more time with her family.

Among them the three sisters have more than two decades of experience replacing pipes and fixing leaks. Female plumbers are a rare breed in Southwest Florida; the sisters have met only a handful in the area. But that has not daunted them or made them question their decision to enter the profession. Each sister went to work as a plumber in their teens — Bethany at 16, Brittany at 17 and Alaura at 18.

Long a male-dominated profession, the sisters never considered plumbing an unusual career choice for women. It's how they grew up.

Photo by Garrett Hubbard, Daily News

Brittany Morrison receives help from her father, Charlie Morrison, removing a Roman tub valve body at a client's home in North Naples on Monday, June 5. Brittany was helping her father fix kitchen sinks when she was 4 years old and has been employed by his company, Charlie's Angels Plumbing, for the past seven years.

"Brittany used to crawl under sinks with me from the time she was old enough to walk," her father said.

Morrison had owned Gulfshore Plumbing since 1978, and his girls frequently went on jobs with him. Brittany fixed her first toilet when she was 12 while on a sleepover.

"I was at a friend's and I went to use their bathroom and their toilet wasn't working right. So I fixed it," she said.

It was something she had seen her father do many times.

The first thing Bethany learned was to "purple" a pipe-end. Each pipe has a street end and a regular end and the street side is the wider end.

"The regular end goes into the street end of the other pipe and you have to prime that end with purple primer for the inspector when you attach the two pipes together," she explained. "Hence the name 'purple the pipe.'"

She doesn't remember how old she was when she learned to do it but she remembers learning to fix things from the time she was old enough to use a bathroom.

After the girls went to work with their father two years they talked him into changing the name of his business to Charlie's Angels Plumbing.

Photo by Garrett Hubbard, Daily News

Brittany talks with client Gloria Blume while working in Blume's bathroom in North Naples on Monday, June 5. Blume said she has been using Charlie's Angels Plumbing for the past couple of years because they are "reliable and very down to earth and welcoming."

Brittany likes to joke that for all her childhood involvement with the business, she hadn't planned on becoming a plumber.

"Eight years later I am still doing it," laughed Brittany, 25. "And it's a stinky, yucky job."

But for all the "yucky" jobs they get called out to, the sisters still enjoy their work.

(Mis)adventures in plumbing

There are reasons why some women might not consider plumbing a career option.

"There are days when I come home and tell my fiance not to touch me because I have crap on me," Brittany said.

Literally.

She has been called out on midnight toilet leaks and overflows, and routinely has to go fix backups and pull out roots or clogs from sewage pipes. All in a day's work.

Bethany, 20, recalled the time she took a cold shower on the floor of a Taco Bell restaurant. She was changing a sink faucet over a dishwasher. First, she had to shut off the water valve and in trying to tighten it as far as she could, she broke one of the valve.

"I lay there on the floor getting soaked as the pipe sprayed everywhere," she said. "Thank God it wasn't the hot water pipe."

Unfortunately for Brittany, some of the most humorous — and most offensive — mishaps have happened to her. Like the time when she was training with her father and went with him to snake out a sewage pipe. She stood back as he pulled back a bunch of roots blocking the pipe and they smacked her right in the face.

Photo by Garrett Hubbard, Daily News

Brittany applies teflon tape onto a water fitting during a job Monday, June 5. Morrison, who is to be married in October, wears her engagement ring all day long, even through her dirtiest jobs.

"One time I got called to this bar on Fifth Avenue in the middle of the night because someone had ripped the toilet off the floor," she said.

She has also had hot solder drop on her skin and glue fall in her eye.

The sisters have had to pull out pantyhose, neckties, sippy cups, toys, and sun glasses out of pipes and septic tanks.

Brittany remembered the time she was called to a job at a condo on upscale Gulfshore Boulevard by a woman who had accidentally dropped a $10,000 diamond earring down a toilet.

"I took the entire pipe and everything apart," Brittany said. "We couldn't find it."

Not easy for a woman plumber

Being a woman in a predominantly male profession isn't all fun and games. Many people the sisters meet think their job is cool, especially their father and Steve Grim, the only non-family member employed at the business.

But Morrison knows firsthand some of the problems his daughters have encountered on the job because of their gender.

"Often customers would tell me, 'I don't want a girl to do the job,'" he said. "I would tell them to just give her a chance. And then once they go, if it's Britanny, the next time they say, 'I want the tall blonde.'"

Often male customers react negatively because they're intimidated when they see a woman arrive to fix something they have already attempted and failed at, Morrison said. Other customers are just plain obnoxious, he said.

"There's one guy who when I show up to do a job says women should be at home raising a family, not out working," Brittany said. "He's just like that. I don't do jobs at his place any more."

But he's the exception, not the norm. Most skeptical customers eventually come around once they watch the sisters at work and realize they are competent.

What's next for Charlie's Angels? Finding a new partner.

Bethany is Dylan (Drew Barrymore), Brittany is Natalie (Cameron Diaz) and for now, their younger brother Jonathan, 17, is stuck being Bosley, a role he doesn't particularly savor. Ultimately they hope their youngest sister, Christen, 15, who has aspirations of being a veterinarian, will consent to being Alex (the Lucy Liu role that Alaura filled) after all.