Christmas Day thanks to these special workers

I love writing a Christmas Day column and telling stories of good deeds, starting with “Sparkle,” who has been a station agent for BART for 11 years and works the early shift at the Union City station. BART asked that her name not be used for security reasons.

There are two little boys and two moms who think of her as an angel. One day she spotted a distraught child on a train and knew something was amiss. “The little boy was crying,” she recalled in a BART video about her job. “I got him off the train and I had a talk with him. I calmed him down, we found his mom, and he was so happy, she was happy.” The mom had come with two other smaller children, but her son was so excited about trains he hopped on BART without noticing that mom wasn’t behind him. “Luckily, he only went one station,” Sparkle said. And then there is Gabriel, whose rubber rain boots got stuck in an escalator. “His mom was pregnant and she was freaking out,” she recalled. “I thought she was going to have that baby. Despite no physical wounds, the boy needed something more to fix his emotional hurt. ‘I want a Band-Aid,’ he said between tears.”

Said Sparkle: “He didn’t have a scratch on his leg but I gave him a Band-Aid anyway because it calmed him down and it calmed the mother down so she didn’t have to worry about him.” Today, when his family comes to the station, the child spots Sparkle and says “Hi, my friend.”

A freeway guardian angel

John Cribbs has worked for years with an Adopt-A-Highway group along Interstate 280 near San Jose City College. In June, he stepped on a log, causing him to fall and break his elbow and wrist. He missed only one litter pickup in July. Then he went above the call of duty. He picked up the tab for lunch at Coco’s for the 11 volunteers recently. “John received a nice year-end bonus and decided to treat us,” said Loui Tucker, the group leader. “What a trooper.”

Freeway heroes

Without hesitation, Caltrans maintenance worker James Anderson jumped into an icy fast-flowing creek to aid the rescue of a woman trapped in a pickup that had rolled off Interstate 80 in the Sierra, landing upside down in the water. Co-workers Kenneth Myers and Rodney Walker then jumped in and kept Anderson from being swept into the current and helped carry the woman up the steep, slippery embankment to safety.