Cherry garners top honor

Patricia Cherry has spent the last 17 years as a bus operator for Sampson County Public Transportation meeting new people and working hard to do her best at the job.

“I’ve always been taught to work so whatever you do, do the best you can. And if you do enjoy what you do, you’re gonna do your best. And that’s what I do,” Cherry said.

And it paid off recently when she won Driver of the Year from the North Carolina Public Transportation Association, an award given to only two drivers from rural counties every year.

It is an award she didn’t even know she was nominated for.

“She did not know it,” reiterated Rosemarie Mobley, the director of Sampson County Transportation. “I nominated her for that, and then we surprised her with the presentation.”

And while Cherry said that winning this award was a shock to her, her direct supervisor Jeff Sawvel believed that it “couldn’t have happened to a better driver.”

“I was just happy that she got it; it’s a reward for a lot of hard work… a lot of good work over the years,” Sawvel said.

“Patricia is… she’s reliable. She’s dependable. She gets the job done, she goes above and beyond when we need her to. Any transit agency would be happy to have her,” Mobley said.

Cherry said that since winning the award, multiple people in the community have recognized her for her good work.

“I went to Gracie’s Grill [Wednesday], and I walked in and the waitress, she said ‘you’re her. You’re the one that was in the newspaper for the driver,” Cherry recounted. “I said, ‘yes, that’s me.’ And the owner, he said ‘welcome to Gracie’s’ real loud, and everybody just turned around and looked.

I called and I told [Sawvel and Mobley], ‘I think I’m going to need security.”

After the waitress, Cherry recounted being recognized by one of her riders on her route last Thursday.

“And like [Thursday] I was coming up by Walmart, by the college and a lady was riding beside me and she kept looking. I looked at her, and she looked at me, and she was like thinking ‘I seen her somewhere.’ And then I guess it popped and she was like, ‘uh huh’ and I waved my hand.”

When asked about being recognized in the community, Cherry said she didn’t mind because she was “being recognized for something good.”

Outside of the riders that Cherry interacts with daily, both Sawvel and Mobley only had good things to say about how she is as an employee.

“Riders talk highly of her, and that’s what you want,” Sawvel said. “In terms of driving, boring is good when it comes to that. Because you don’t want to have incidents, you don’t want to have calls where things have gone wrong and all that. You don’t get that with her.”

“What you see is what you get, and she’s the same all the time. She’s a pleasure to have here and pleasant to everybody,” Mobley said.

According to Mobley the Driver of the Year award was “started in either 2020 or 2021, which means Patricia is one of less than five people to be given this award.”