Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 7, July 2003

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Metro honors North Ender

By JAMES BUSH

Northeast Seattle residents will see the face of an old friend when they glance up at the bus sign advertising the 2002 Metro Operator of the Year.

Judi Fisher grew up in Lake City and now resides near Green Lake. Her usual gig is driving routes 65 and 74, but she's also been found in the driver's seat on routes 68, 71, 72, and 73, all among Northeast Seattle's most popular buses.

She's now been honored as one of the best at her job. The Operator of the Year is chosen from the 84 drivers who have been named Operator of the Month at each of the seven Metro bases. The final selection is made through a secret vote by that same group of top drivers.

The results of the vote are a well-kept secret, as Fisher discovered. On June 3, she walked in to a meeting of the operators support team, a Metro program which helps new drivers learn the ropes from veterans like Fisher. She opened the door to a conference room expecting to find six bus drivers "and the room was full of people and all these cameras were pointing at me," says Fisher. "It was a great party."

Her Metro superiors had help in keeping the secret, she adds. "My family and my partner had known about it for a month."

Born in Vienna, Austria, where her father helped rebuild the city after World War II, Fisher attended Lake City and John Rogers Elementary Schools and Jane Addams Middle School. Her family moved to the Eastside, where she graduated from high school, then it was back to the North End as a University of Washington student.

She received a bachelor's degree in French literature and a master's degree in Romance linguistics, but teaching jobs were scarce in 1974 Seattle. "So I thought I would drive a bus for a while," she says.

Fisher never made it back to the classroom, but has since compiled a stellar 29-year career with Metro. She paid her dues by driving far-flung regional routes to Tacoma and Everett, then worked her way back to the old neighborhood. She has been assigned to Metro's North Base for the last 10 years.

Fisher claims to actually enjoy driving in the occasional Seattle snowstorms, although she has vivid memories of being stuck trying to drive uphill on 15th Avenue Northeast in the U District with broken tire chains (she solved the problem by placing the chains in front of her tires, moving ahead a few feet, then repeating the process "sort of a manual progression up 15th.").

Her most dangerous moment came on a downtown route, when a hostile rider drew a knife. "I had asked him to quit smoking and he didn't think that was a good idea," she jokes. Looking into her rear-view mirror, Fisher spotted the knife in the man's hand as he walked up the aisle toward her. Thinking quickly, she stopped the bus, opened the front doors, and exited onto the downtown street. Her would-be assailant fled.

While Fisher handles trouble well (she once ended a fight on the bus by announcing to the brawlers: "This is your stop"), she's best known for her courtesy. In the past eight years, she has garnered more than a dozen commendations (unsolicited compliments via phone or writing) from passengers, including one from the head of the special education department at Nathan Hale High School for her kindness to students.

Fisher's secret for surviving the years at a demanding job is to keep busy in her non-work hours. She enjoys traveling, gardening, and boating. A cancer survivor herself, she does volunteer work with cancer patients. She also has taken jazz dance classes at Madrona's Spectrum Dance for 22 years. "It's a real good way to get rid of stress, get some exercise, and have a good time with friends," she says. "It's one of the things I think has enabled me to work at Metro for 29 years."