CHP Honors Retired Bus Driver

After driving hundred of thousands of miles for the Ocean View School District, Sally Miller was behind the wheel again Tuesday after accepting the California Highway Patrol’s “Bus Driver of the Year” award.

But this time, Miller was prepping her gleaming Fleetwood Discovery for a cross-country trip with her husband, her plaque securely tucked in a drawer of the 30-foot motor home.

The 62-year-old Miller retired in January after 25 years of shuttling children from Westminster, Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley to, and from, school. Miller, who was nominated by her district, won the statewide recognition on National Bus Drivers’ Day after a quarter century of driving without an accident.

In the beginning, Miller drove the notoriously difficult-to-operate No. 5 bus, transporting children who, in time, became parents themselves. Miller then drove their children on the somewhat easier-to-handle No. 7.

“She’s the ultimate role model [as] a bus driver, and just as a woman,” said Alycia Helm, 37, her colleague for 13 years. “You could ask her anything about bus driving, sewing or cooking. . . . She was the greatest.”

Although Miller, a mother of three, took pride in her full-time job, often arriving 15 minutes early to wax her bus, she also worked for May Co. and Target. She saved enough money to buy her construction worker husband, Dennis, a Ferrari. Red, of course.

“He always wanted a Ferrari--I thought he should have a Ferrari,” Miller said. “I said, ‘Stick with me long enough, and you’ll get a Ferrari.’ He stuck it out.”

It took 10 years, but when Dennis got his car, it was paid in full--and in cash.

Colleagues said Miller was especially adept at handling special-education children, and recounted their favorite memories of sharing the garage with Miller: There was the time she taught everyone how to handle wheelchairs on the bus. And the time when all the drivers had to clean their buses for a fund-raiser.

“She walks up with a toothbrush,” Helm recalled. “ ‘We have to get the nuts and bolts,’ she says. Crazy. I miss her.”

Jean Hetherington, a colleague at the district for 25 years, agreed.

“She understood everything, almost like a psychologist. That may sound funny because she was just a bus driver but she really knew psychology,” 55-year-old Hetherington said. “I wish she was still here.”

But Miller will be on the road beginning May 1 with her husband of 45 years. When they leave town May 1, they’ll be heading to explore the southwestern United States.

“We’ll stop whenever we want to stop, and we’ll come back when we run out of money,” Miller said with a smile.