Thanks for everything Carla

We laughed about the boots again last week.

It was many years ago and I had asked my newsroom colleague

Carla Allen if she had a pair of steel-toe boots I could borrow. I was doing a story that required going onto a construction site.

The next morning, sitting by my desk, were the biggest pair of steeltoe boots I've ever seen.

I said to our editor Fred Hatfield, “What size are Carla's feet?”

My next question was, “How big does she think my feet are?”

I put the boots on and looked like some bizarre disproportioned creature from the ankles down. Fred and I looked at my feet and we laughed.

“Carla obviously grabbed the wrong boots,” he said. “Maybe you should call her and see if she has another pair.”

When I asked if she had another pair of boots, in her most sincere voice she asked me what was wrong with the ones she had brought me. “Are they too small?” she asked.

Is she for real, I wondered?

“Too small?” I said. “Ummm, no.” It was then that she clued in that she had grabbed her son Chas's boots by mistake. Chas is six-footsomething. I am not.

When she got to the newsroom we could not stop laughing when she saw me standing in her son's size 13 steel-toe boots. I wasn't exactly the poster girl for workplace safety.

Still, I couldn't fault Carla. After all, she was only trying to be helpful.

That is one of the things I will miss most about working with Carla. Last Friday was her last day on the job as she's taken an early retirement. Carla was always helpful, evident by the many times I'd call her and ask, “Can you take a run out and see…” whenever I needed a set of eyes on something.

I've owed her a debt of gratitude from the day she started working in our Vanguard newsroom. I was on maternity leave at the time with my son Justin. The newsroom was short staffed. I offered to come back to work part-time for a bit, even though I hated the thought of leaving my baby so soon. But when I walked into Fred's office, he told me there was no need. They had hired Carla full-time. I was thrilled – both because she'd be a great asset to the newsroom, and because I could keep being a mom.

Over the years, as my children aged, and if times were tough, she was still as supportive as ever – because she's not only a good friend, but she's a great mom too.

Carla had a more adventurous soul than me. Whereas I hated to even step onto a plane, she was over-the-moon thrilled to be asked to jump out of one. And her adventures went well beyond the necessity of a parachute. She was always our go-to person for those assignments.

She's also a gifted gardener. Another skill she and I do not share. I remember once apologizing to her for putting a plant on my windowsill at work that was plastic.

Most of all, it was Carla's ability to seek out and write interesting stories that I will miss most. Some weeks she'd pitch a story idea that I wasn't sure about. But what I was sure of was that if she was pitching it, she would do a good job with it. So as her editor, I let her run with it.

She didn't disappoint. A story I worried might be blah, she would churn into something heartwarming, engaging, and interesting. When she told me she had filed it, I couldn't wait to read it.

We've shared lots of good times over the years. Cheers and tears – sometimes in the newsroom, sometimes outside of it. And laughs. So many of them.

The good thing about working with someone is even when they're gone, it doesn't mean you won't still keep in touch. Because obviously we will.

We said our last goodbyes as coworkers last Friday afternoon. Said Carla, as we were ready to part ways – “So this is where it all ends, in a snowy parking lot in January.”

But one ending is another beginning.

Good luck in the new chapter of your life that you'll be writing Carla.

Happy retirement and thanks for your contributions to community journalism – and to me as well.