Longtime Crossing Guard Has a Soft Spot for Her Corner of the World

For 20 years, Ruth Pacheco has dressed most mornings in orange and black, grabbed her red stop sign and plastic cone and headed toward the sound of chattering children, to Gridley Road and 178th Street in Cerritos.

“It’s my corner and they’re my kids,” the 58-year-old crossing guard said protectively of the spot and children she has commanded for two decades.

Pacheco, an Artesia resident, was honored by the city of Cerritos recently for her dedication to making sure schoolchildren get across the busy street on their way to Burbank Elementary School. Thousands of children, many now in college, have crossed the busy thoroughfare without harm, although Pacheco herself had a close call.

“A car knocked me down once,” she said. “But I didn’t get hurt.”

Two or three times a day, drivers crash into the plastic orange cone she places in the middle of the road to persuade motorists to slow down. When the cone gets so mangled that it can no longer stand, “The city just gets me another one,” she said.

Although the children have stayed more or less the same over the years, (with the exception of dressing “a little sloppier than they used to,”) she said, the drivers have not. Some refuse to stop. Others never even slow down, whizzing by at 45 m.p.h.

“They’re a lot faster and not really as considerate as they used to be,” she said. “There’s a lot more teen-agers out there. Usually I don’t say anything, but the kids do. They yell at them, ‘ Slow down !’ But it usually doesn’t do any good.”

Pacheco, born and raised in Artesia, never needed a crossing guard when she was attending now-defunct Pioneer Elementary School. “Back then, there were dairies all around, not cars and buildings.”

In the 1950s, she married another Artesia resident and the couple had four children. When the youngest started school, Pacheco took the crossing guard job as a way to earn a little extra money and independence.

At first, her husband was opposed to the idea, she said. “He thought I’d neglect my home and kids. But after I started, he never complained. I was always home early enough to fix dinner.”

Her children are now grown, with the youngest in college, and Pacheco still reports to the same corner three times a day--in the morning, at lunch and after school--earning $10 an hour from the city, twice as much as she did when she started.

There are other advantages too, she said. “I’m never bored. The kids talk to me. I crochet. Or play the radio. The neighbors around here are real nice and we talk. I meet a lot of people who I think are the nicest people around. To me, that means a lot. It’s like this is my corner and these are my kids. That’s how I feel about it.”

And she serves as a role model. “Sometimes the kids will say, ‘Oh, I want to grow up to a crossing guard.’ And I tell them, ‘No. Finish school and get a job inside! I’m out in the rain and 100-degree heat. I’m used to it. But you guys are young. You can do anything.’ ”

Many of them come back, too, a lot taller and with deeper voices. “And I don’t recognize them!” she said. “They go by and wave on their way to college or a job. It’s nice.”

Though approaching retirement age, Pacheco figures she’ll walk many more miles back and forth across that same Cerritos street, red stop sign in hand. “I told my husband as long as I can cross the kids safely,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

Frank Blair, a longtime Long Beach dentist, recently gave $10,000 to the Long Beach Education Foundation on behalf of himself and his family. The donation will help build a 4,000-student Long Beach Unified School District high school proposed for a site where Navy housing now stands.

Pamela Prest, a teacher at Willard Elementary School, received the following note from a parent shortly before leaving for winter vacation. “Dear Ms. Prest: Tiffany is under the impression that you will be leaving on vacation and taking her along. She asked me to pack her clothes. Please clear this up.”

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