Countywide : This Driver Gets a Ticket for Courtesy

Jean Parker of Camarillo had no idea that the sheriff’s deputy motioning her brown Mazda into a gas station Friday wanted to give her a commendation, not a ticket.

“I have to tell them right away they didn’t do anything wrong,” Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Wade said as he stepped out of his cruiser.

As he approached the passenger side of her car, Parker’s facial expression was one more of curiosity than concern. Wade then introduced Alan F. Kaluhikaua, a member of the Noontime Optimists Club of Camarillo.

“You are being cited for being a courteous driver,” said Kaluhikaua, who started filling in Parker’s pink citation on his clipboard.

Parker, a 58-year-old technical writer for SYS in Oxnard, smiled with relief.

“Well, I thought maybe that I had backed the traffic up too much on the freeway,” said Parker.

Although she had the right of way as she drove off the Carmen Drive off-ramp of the Ventura Freeway, Parker gave it up to a car heading a line of cars stopped at a stop sign on Ventura Boulevard.

That act of courtesy earned her a citation and a reward of about $40 worth of gift certificates from the Optimists Club.

“I’ve been there,” she said when asked why she did it. “I know what it’s like when nobody on the freeway will let you in.”

By 3:40 p.m. Friday, the club had issued three of the 12 pink citations to be given out this holiday season. The club has awarded about three dozen of the commendations since the program’s inception in 1988. “The program is just to award the average citizen for giving up his right of way and letting someone go,” said Kaluhikaua. “Just to let them know we care.”

Parker was pleased, especially with the award luncheon Feb. 10 when the gift certificates will be distributed to the citation winners.

“This is wonderful,” Parker said. “It will give me something to look forward to.”