Our customers and their loved ones depend on us to provide safe and reliable transportation service, and our drivers consistently set a high bar with the level of service they provide. Occasionally, though, one of our drivers will go so far above the standards we’ve come to expect from them that it warrants special recognition, and this time is no exception.
Sheila Davis, one of our current Drivers of the Month for March 2022, regularly goes above and beyond the call of duty to help her passengers in any way she can, but a couple of months ago she did something so special to meet the needs of one of her passengers that we feel it deserves special recognition.
Our service is curb-to-curb, and drivers are required to help passengers board and exit the vehicle, but generally they are not allowed to help passengers walk across a property to the front door unless a special waiver form has been signed and filed with our agency. Still, many of our drivers take it upon themselves to sit and wait for passengers to make it safely inside before departing for the next stop.
Sheila’s manifest is usually packed with many trips to perform throughout the day, so she keeps to a tight schedule, but she always tries to wait long enough to make sure her passengers make it safely inside their homes.
One day in January she was dropping off one of her regular riders, who we’ll call Ms. Shepherd for the purposes of this article, and as usual she waited to make sure Ms. Shepherd made it safely inside. Sheila looked away for a split second, and when she looked back Ms. Shepherd was already out of view.
“So I was about to drive off,” Sheila explained, “and then something just said ‘Sheila just look over there…just look.’ So I looked back and I seen [sic] some bags on the porch.”
Sheila immediately got out of her vehicle to get a closer look and noticed Ms. Shepherd lying in a prone position on the porch next to her bags. She ran up and asked Ms. Shepherd if she was okay, to which Ms. Shepherd replied that she was okay and explained that she had tripped over her coat.
“I don’t know if she passed out or what, or did she hurt her face, so…um…I said…oh well she said, ‘Baby, just help me up.’”
Sheila helped Ms. Shepherd up and into a chair on the front porch and continued to check on her. Once she was able to see that Ms. Shepherd was responsive and appeared to be okay, she called Ms. Shepherd’s daughter who lived at the same address.
“I said, ‘This is Sheila with ClasTran. I’m just letting you know that…um…your mom fell. She tripped over her coat.” The daughter informed Sheila that she and her husband had been alerted by their video doorbell and had seen everything and that her husband was on the way there.
Sheila waited until the daughter’s husband arrived and then continued along her scheduled route, but she wasn’t done yet. She kept thinking about the heavy bags Ms. Shepherd usually carried on her shoulder and wondered if they may have contributed to her fall.
“She was selling a lot of stuff at the [senior] center, like making stuff, socks and stuff for the people at the center. So she had a bag that was heavy, and that might have made her fall too,” she said. “She had a bag that made…you know…put a lot of pressure on her back. So I just had a…I had rolling bag that I just gave her.”
It was an Alabama football tote bag with wheels to help transport heavier loads. Luckily enough, Ms. Shepherd is an Alabama fan. “She love [sic] that bag,” Sheila laughed.
Ms. Shepherd’s daughter came home later and checked her out, and she was okay. She got some rest and felt fine the next morning. Sheila explained to her that it would be okay to cancel her trips until she was feeling good enough to return to the senior center, but to her surprise, Ms. Shepherd would have none of it.
“She went to the center the next day!” Sheila exclaimed.
Ms. Shepherd’s daughter got in touch with Sheila to extend her gratitude for being there that day. “She called me and she was just saying how much she appreciate [sic], you know, what I do…what I did for her mom,” Sheila said, “and she said she appreciate [sic] me giving her that bag.”
Sheila didn’t think anything of it. She’s the kind of person who would do this for anyone.
“But once I seen [sic] that that bag was that heavy I was like, ‘Uh-uh, I don’t need her trippin’ up no more on anything. So I just gave her that bag just to help her out with her stuff. That’s all,” she said modestly as she recalled events.
“She still get [sic] a ride to the center like twice a week, and she have [sic] that bag every time I see her. She love [sic] that bag.”
We’re so glad that Sheila was there that day and that she had the instinct to go back and check on Ms. Shepherd when something didn’t feel quite right, and we’re certainly relieved that Ms. Shepherd was okay. We expect the kind of situational awareness and presence of mind shown by Sheila that day from all our drivers, but Sheila went above and beyond the call of duty when she gave Ms. Shepherd that bag.
Ms. Shepherd weighed on Sheila’s mind the rest of that day, so much so that she took it upon herself to later gift her own rolling bag to Ms. Shepherd to help make her life a little easier and prevent what she believes may have been one of the contributing factors that caused her to fall.
“The bag she used to carry was heavy,” Sheila recalled, “but once…you know, once she fell I knew then, I’m like ‘I’mma give her this rolling bag, cause she got [sic] too much.’”
Sheila was named one of this month’s Drivers of the Month based partially on her 91% on-time performance last month, but we feel that her service above and beyond the call of duty deserves special recognition as well.
So, to Sheila Davis, all of us here at ClasTran collectively exclaim, “Kudos!” Thank you for being there for our customers and continuing to set a high bar for the level of service our customers can expect to receive from ClasTran. We are proud and honored to have you as one of our drivers.
