One in 8700

For nearly eight years, Mike Lucia of Lincoln, Vt. has driven buses for Addison County Transit Resources (ACTR), following a Middlebury route four days a week and a Rutland route for two. Lucia dedicates the majority of his time to transporting Middlebury residents where they need to go, often to places he was not designated to stop. On an average day Lucia drives passengers that he personally knows directly in front of their houses, or picks them up from work without having to be asked.
“We do have designated stops, but we can stop anywhere its safe to drop people off,” said Lucia. “We do a lot of deviations too.”
After working at a manufacturing company building lawn equipment, Lucia decided he needed a less straining job and became interested in working for ACTR. As a resident of Addison County, he had often seen the ACTR buses driving around the area, and thought, “hey, that might be a really good job.”
Since becoming a driver, Lucia has remained dedicated to his passengers and knows most of them by name as well as their usual destinations. The most valuable part of work for Lucia is getting to know the people of Middlebury and creating close bonds with them.
“My favorite part about my job is all the interesting people that I meet,” he said. “I pretty much know everybody who rides usually.”
Lucia is also proud of the fact that his job goes beyond meeting people from a variety of places; it gives back to the community as well. ACTR, whose routes cover most of Addison County, works with the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging (CVAA) on a program called Meals on Wheels. Drivers such as Lucia deliver meals once a week to the elderly or disabled that cannot easily leave their homes.
“We have a meal site and sometimes we transport people there,” said Lucia. “Mostly though we go house-to-house delivering meals … it’s a very good program.”
Beyond Meals on Wheels, Lucia helps residents of Middlebury and the surrounding area in other ways, as ACTR provides transportation to doctor visits and dialysis centers every Wednesday, and also offers free rides to Special Olympics meets when they occur. Lucia provides many with transportation to Porter Hospital, and he is proud he is able to help those in need.
“We have a lot of clients we take to the doctors and you get really close to them after a while,” he said. “People think we just drive around and pick people up. We do a lot of different things a lot of people really don’t know about.”
All of Lucia’s hard work does not go unnoticed. Aside from the friendships he fosters on the job, the most gratifying aspect of working for ACTR is the feedback he gets from passengers. Bruce Pfeiffer, a frequent passenger of ACTR, wrote a letter of gratitude to the company supervisor in March. Lucia keeps the letter underneath his schedule on his clipboard to look at whenever he needs reassurance of the good work he is doing. In the letter, Pfeiffer thanked the ACTR team “for helping reduce my carbon footprint, for providing relief from many of the pains and suffers of growing old, and for simply being the heart of a real community that I enjoy being a part of and which literally widens my horizons.”
Outside of ACTR, Lucia is a very busy man. With four grandchildren and a passion for the outdoors, he has plenty to fill his time. He enjoys camping and fishing especially.
Within the next few years, Lucia plans to retire. His connection to ACTR, however, has made him passionate about helping others, and he hopes to continue giving back to the community.
“Eventually I’m going to retire and when I do, I’ll do a lot of volunteer work to keep in touch with everybody,” he said. “I’ll help out with Meals on Wheels and things like that.”
Regardless of what the future holds, Lucia will never lose sight of the value of the relationships he has fostered through his work.
“I’ve had a lot of people impact my life working for ACTR, and I think I do the same for them,” he said.