A young boy’s curiosity led to a career at Metro, thanks to the kindness of a bus driver who saw his potential.
Sam, Joy, and Sam’s sister Lucy Mencimer on their tour of the Northern Bus Garage, 11 years ago.(Courtesy WMATA)
Sam, Joy, and Sam’s sister Lucy Mencimer on their tour of the Northern Bus Garage, 11 years ago.(Courtesy WMATA)
When Sam Mencimer was 10 years old, he took the 54 bus from Takoma to L’Enfant Plaza daily. Every day, he would have a whole host of questions for bus driver Joy Kenley.
And every day, Kenley would answer him as best as she could. Then, one day, she had an idea: “How about a tour of the bus garage?”
“I was like, ‘yes, absolutely!’ I was over the moon!” said Mencimer, now 22. “As a 10-year-old, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.”
Fast forward 11 years, and Mencimer is now all grown up with a college degree and working in Metro’s signal engineering division. Kenley, now a station manager, realized she and Mencimer had the same employer now.
“I would think, ’11 years ago, and he found me.’ And I’m thinking, ‘He’s in a Metro uniform — awesome!’” Kenley said.
A lot has changed since 2014.
“The 54 bus, it would go from Takoma to, at the time, L’Enfant Plaza,” Mencimer said.
That bus route has transformed into the D50 in Metro’s reshuffling of bus routes this year.
Mencimer credited Kenley’s kindness and patience in showing him the ropes of a job he loves.
“People always say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. That’s how it is here,” Mencimer said. “And then I get to work with all these amazing people. So amazing.”
“I’m very proud of him,” Kenley said. “I’m glad I had that impact on him. If I get a chance to do it again, I will.”
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A Louisiana kindergartener turned a school bus safety rule into a game last month, leading to cheers from his classmates and now, people all around the world.
The 5-year-old boy, Xavier, lives in Carencro, about 60 miles west of Baton Rouge. Because he’s so young, when Xavier gets off the bus, his driver can’t pull off until he’s home safely.
One day, bus driver Chad Desormeaux heard the boy say he was the fastest kid alive, and then he ran home as the other kids cheered him on. His classmates yelled “Go Xavier,” looking on and screaming in excitement as he ran to his house about three doors down.
Desormeaux thought it was adorable, and he soon found out it’s an everyday occurrence. He decided to record one day and after getting permission from parents. He posted the video on TikTok on Dec. 1.
In one video, the bus driver asks the 5-year-old “You ready, Xavier?” before asking for a thumb’s up and opening the door so the student could take off.
“We sit there and we watch him run home that way to make sure he makes it into a driveway,” he told USA TODAY. “The faster he runs, the faster we can take off. It became a game.”
The video the bus driver uploaded has nearly 6 million views. Xavier told USA TODAY Tuesday afternoon that he feels great.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said, adding that he often runs by himself.
Desormeaux is no longer driving the school bus since he was recently elected to the school board. He previously worked as a substitute bus driver because there was a shortage of drivers in the area and did it for over a year.
Boy’s mother says attention has been a blessing
Xavier’s mother, Tiffany Saine, said her son has always been into racing and would often run in the family’s driveway when he was younger.
He loves running and playing Sonic and other video games, she said.
He has been riding the bus for about a year and racing from the bus to his house is an everyday thing. His family didn’t realize the video would blow up the way it did on social media, she said. Even the mayor of Carencro wants to meet the 5-year-old soon.
“We are blessed,” Saine said. “I feel excited and blessed for him to get acknowledged.”
Bus driver and 5-year-old take Disney World trip together
Desormeaux, Xavier’s bus driver, said he didn’t post the video for money or anything like that. He thought it was adorable and wanted to share.
Once the video went viral, an organization called Star Athletics reached out to him to invite the 5-year-old on a trip to Disney World.
Star Athletics is owned by Olympic Medalist Dennis Mitchell and his wife, coach Damu Cherry-Mitchell. The pair work with athletes such as Sha’Carri Richardson.
Louisiana 5-year-old Xavier with track superstar Sha’Carri Richardson in Florida.
The group contacted Desormeaux and invited Xavier to Orlando, where they got to meet Richardson and go to Disney World and other parks. It was 5-year-old Xavier’s first time flying and going to Disney World.
They also went to an Orlando Magic basketball game. While in Orlando, people who spotted the 5-year-old at Disney World asked to take photos with him.
“It was so much fun,” the boy’s mother said. “We went to Disney World. I mean, they just showed us so much love.”
Former Louisiana bus driver Chad Desormeaux and Xavier. The 5-year-old rode Desormeaux’s bus and went viral after the bus driver uploaded an adorable TikTok video of the boy running from the bus to his house.
Desormeaux said Xavier is a gifted child and the two have grown to be pretty close.
Desormeaux has four kids of his own. He also has a few kids living with him who came home with his son from college. He has a full house of young people with his son, four football players, his daughter and her best friend.
“It’s all for good reason,” he said. “All the boys are 18. “Most of them are going to get scholarships in football, including my son … It’s just to get them through graduation.”
One of the young men staying with him wants to be a firefighter, so the family is helping him reach his goal.
Top left to right: Joe Black, Mallory Looney, Chad Desormeaux, Austin Dyson (player), Omarion Savoy (hoodie), Brenna Desormeaux, Shelby Cloteaux (glasses). Bottom left to right: Kameron Cyprien and Savanna Desormeaux.
Bus driver who filmed viral video has sights set on mayoral run
Desormeaux joined the school board after talking to his wife about wanting to do more in their community. When he found out a school board member was leaving soon, he decided he’d go for it.
He was elected last year and started this January. Later on, he plans to run for mayor.
“We currently have a mayor who is very, very good,” he said, but when she’s done he plans to run.
Louisiana 5-year-old Xavier, who proclaimed himself the fastest kid alive He went viral after his bus driver posted a video of him sprinting from the bus to his house.
For now, he plans to serve a few terms on the school board.
He’s glad to have met Xavier and said the more he gets to know him, the more he is amazed by him.
“He might be the fastest kid right now but I think he could be president one day,” he said.
A Long Island bus driver was fired after she was caught drinking a White Claw seltzer while transporting children from school in Smithtown, New York.
Amal Hanna, 60, says she drank an alcoholic beverage unwittingly because she grabbed it from her fridge thinking it was a regular seltzer that her roommate had left there.
“I have been crying and crying, I don’t even have any more tears. It was just a mistake, it was a mistake,” she told News12 of the Oct. 4 incident in a story that was published on Friday.
Hanna, who is undergoing chemotherapy, told the outlet that due to her cancer treatment, she had difficulty tasting that the drink was alcoholic.
After someone spotted the White Claw in Hanna’s cup holder as she transported kids, the school district immediately pulled her from her route. No one was injured in the incident.
“For people like me that don’t drink, how are they going to know this is alcohol?” said Hanna, who added that she had no clue that White Claw drinks contain alcohol, according to News12.
Hanna said she now fears losing her home without the job that she’s had for the past 15 years.
“For people like me that don’t drink, how are they going to know this is alcohol?” former school bus driver Amal Hanna told local news outlet News12.
Cindy Ord via Getty Images for NYCWFF
Smithtown School District Superintendent Mark Secaur released a statement to families following the incident, News12 reports.
He said the district had “received a report of a bus driver drinking an alcoholic beverage while on the route to bring students home from High School West. It was confirmed that an alcoholic beverage was on board, and the driver was promptly taken from the bus, and a different driver completed the route.”
Hanna has received an outpouring of support, including a GoFundMe fundraiser that a local parent set up for her that has already amassed $24,000 as of Thursday.
“The children on her bus said she is [the] kindest woman who was like a grandma to them,” the page’s organizer wrote on GoFundMe. “She is undergoing chemotherapy and made an honest mistake that cost her her job. My children were on the bus that day. They knew the circumstances had to be a mistake.”
News12 interviewed several parents from Smithtown High School West who praised Hanna’s demeanor with their children.
“She was so sweet and kind to them, I can’t imagine she would ever do anything to harm them,” one parent told the outlet.
The company that Hanna worked for, WE Transport, released a statement about the incident, News12 reported. “This alleged conduct is completely unacceptable, and the driver has been immediately removed from service.”
WE Transport did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Though Suffolk County police told News12 that Hanna won’t face charges over the mishap, Secaur said she is indefinitely banned from transporting any Smithtown students.
Prince George’s County Public Schools is the latest to partner with BusPatrol to improve school bus safety
Press Release –
updated: Mar 31, 2021
BOWIE, Md., March 31, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– BusPatrol announces a new partnership in Maryland with Prince George’s County Public Schools. The School District is the latest to launch a school bus safety program to protect students as they travel to and from school.
As part of the program, 1,216 buses at Prince George’s County have been equipped with safety technology including stop-arm cameras to deter drivers from illegally passing school buses. This has been provided at zero cost to the School District or taxpayers, and revenue from citations will be used to fund the installation and maintenance of the technology over a five-year term.
Maryland school districts including Queen Anne, Carroll, Howard, and Montgomery Counties are already working with BusPatrol to improve student safety. In total, more than 3,500 Maryland school buses now have access to the technology, protecting an estimated 175,000 students.
According to data from NASDPTS, there are an estimated 17 million stop-arm violations each school year in the US. In Maryland, school bus drivers recorded a total of 3,194 violations in a single day in 2019, as reported in The Baltimore Sun. Every time a driver illegally passes a stopped school bus, they put a child at risk.
The BusPatrol program is the most deployed school bus safety program in the US and is proven to reduce the number of stop-arm violations through education and enforcement. Communities that have implemented a BusPatrol program have seen a 30% reduction in illegal passings of school buses year-on-year.
Speaking about the program, PGCPS Chief Executive Officer Dr. Monica Goldson said: “As operators of one of the largest school bus fleets in the nation, we are constantly exploring new ways to ensure safe and dependable student transportation. The new stop-arm cameras that will capture video of traffic violations are just one way we are leveraging technology to improve student safety both on and off of school buses.”
Jean Souliere, CEO and Founder at BusPatrol, believes the partnerships come at an important time: “School buses have been off roads for several weeks and drivers may have forgotten the importance of school bus safety laws. This makes now the perfect moment to launch school bus safety programs to protect students.
“Our program is proven to change driver behavior and 95% of drivers that are ticketed for passing a school bus never receive a second ticket. We are committed to working with communities across Maryland and the US to improve safety for all students.”
In addition to the program addressing the illegal passing of school buses, the newly acquired smart fleet management solutions include COVID-19 mitigation, sanitization and contact tracing tools to help protect student riders and school bus drivers. Cloud-connected interior cameras and student tracking and management tools such as GPS, RFID-enabled ridership cards, and tablets, will enhance contact tracing procedures for school transportation officials. Additionally, tools for pre- and post- trip bus inspections to ensure COVID-19 sanitization protocols are standardized and verified digitally, making it safer for student riders and school bus drivers.
—ENDS—
Press contact: kate.spree@buspatrol.com
ABOUT BUSPATROL
BusPatrol is a safety technology company with the mission of making the journey to and from school safer for children. BusPatrol’s safety programs change driver behavior and create a culture of awareness and responsibility around school buses. In addition, they provide accessibility for school districts, and municipalities to modernize their entire school bus fleets by outfitting them with the latest stop-arm, route planning and route execution technology.
