Crossing Guard Takes His Honor in Stride

Eighty-three-year-old Frank Anzures has stood on the same busy corner at the intersection of Ball Road and Walker Street in Cypress most mornings for the last 14 years.

The corner hasn’t changed all that much in those 14 years, he says. Businesses have closed but others opened in their place.

But Anzures, with his orange jacket and hand-held stop sign, has remained a familiar sight.

Anzures is a crossing guard--the best crossing guard in the city this year, according to his bosses.

“If I could clone him, I would, believe me,” said Dolores Reyes, Anzures’ supervisor.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, Anzures will accept the Outstanding School Crossing Guard of the Year Award from All City Management Services, the company that handles crossing guard services for Cypress.

“God knows why [I won the award],” Anzures said. “They think I’m that good. I think all the crossing guards do a good job, myself.”

Lt. Mike Idom of the Cypress Police Department said he sees Anzures at the corner “probably daily.”

“The guy’s a dedicated individual who takes his job seriously,” Idom said.

Anzures, known for the friendly greetings he gives people at the corner, has a firm handshake that’s still strong from a 50-year career in construction. He said he became a crossing guard because of his love for children and because he wanted to keep busy after he retired.

Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, he worked all over the country before moving to La Palma 20 years ago with his wife, Guadalupe. They have eight children, seven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

Anzures was recruited into the ranks of the city’s crossing guards by his daughter, who was working as a guard at the time. He has spent most of his 14 years on the job providing a safe crossing for students on their way to and from Morris Elementary School.

Anzures claims the corner where he works is the best spot in the city to be a crossing guard.

“It’s a very good corner,” he said. “It’s challenging, for one thing. There’s a lot of people that don’t respect us. They make right turns right in front of the kids. You have to give them a mean look sometimes. You have to put the sign right in their face.”

Anzures is all business when it comes to crossing. Although he’s never seen an accident on the job, he said many cars blow by the corner at speeds well over the 45-mph limit.

He said he keeps his eyes on the traffic and doesn’t converse much with the students he crosses, although “some like to joke around with me.”

Like the cars that race through the intersection and the restaurants that close and open on the corner, the students at Morris Elementary come and go, Anzures said.

“Once they get out of there, I don’t see them anymore,” he said.

But Anzures, who has lived in the same pink stucco house in a La Palma tract for 20 years, said he plans to stick around the corner indefinitely.

“I’ve been doing it a long time, and I’m going to keep going as long as I can,” he said.

Alex Katz can be reached at (714) 966-5977.