Maricela Arámbula, 61, said she doesn't get much rest at night since she learned the company was shutting down and she would be without a job.

"As you get older, you know, it's harder to find work," she said.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, she was cutting off the mesh screens on a flower sculpture, tossing it into a plastic bag and placing the sculpture in a pile for the next company to use.

Arámbula said she's been with the company for as long as it has existed.

"My son was two when I started working," she said, smiling. "Now he's 40."

Arámbula said she began working in the float building business in 1986, five years after arriving in the U.S. from Mexico, where she made a living creating paper flowers.

She said that skill helped her get a job with the company, learning to put screen mesh on metal sculptures that would later be decorated with flowers, petals, spices and seeds. She said her time at the company has allowed her to learn other skills.

"I love this job so much," she said. "I don't think I would have worked this long if I didn't."

She said working at the company not only helped her raise her son and daughter but it also helped her support her parents back home in Mexico.

When they visited some years back she took them to watch the Rose Parade. It was raining hard but her parents were enjoying the parade too much to care. She said she remembered pointing out to her mom which floats she helped create.

"I'd say: 'Look, mom, I worked on those flowers on that float,'" she said, recalling. "And my mom would say: 'Oh, that looks so good darling.'"

She paused to raise her glasses and wipe her tears.

"It's all over now," she said. "It's sad."

Nearby, using a metal cutter to turn a bird sculpture into scrap metal, Marcus Pollitz, 60, said it's been devastating to destroy artwork that so many workers like himself had a hand in.

"We always cut things up at the end of the year and put the best stuff on the side, but now, we're not going to see it again, it's very sad," he said. "Everything you see here was sculpted by a welder, painted and adorn in order for it to look like the concept."

Pollitz said he felt a sense of emptiness when he heard Estes tell the staff that the company was closing.

"There was no miracle that was going to come out of it," Pollitz said. "There wasn't somebody that was going to be right behind us that will pick us up and take us on to the next step. Instead, we have to prepare to close down."

On Thursday afternoon, the sound of buzz saws, the engine of a forklift and metals falling on the ground reverberated throughout the warehouse. Workers yelled out as they heard a Vicente Fernandez song come on the speakers that were attached to the ceiling.

Welding sparks shot out as workers took apart old floats and some swept the floor.

It was nearing closing time when Estes made it out of his office and walked around the 80,000-square-foot warehouse, stopping to talk to workers and occasionally to light up his cigar.

"I wanted to do this for another four or five years, not retire," he said. "But now, I don't seem to have a choice in the matter."

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