Meet ATU: Jennifer Gordon, Train Operator

Jennifer Gordon has been a BART train operator for fifteen years. It was a special moment when her youngest son first realized what his mother’s job was. Diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, four-year-old Evan had developed an obsession with trains (obsessions are characteristic of people with Asperger’s, his mother says). When Evan Gordon came to BART for his first Take-Your-Sons-to-Work-Day, he wore a Thomas the Tank shirt, Thomas the Tank underwear, Thomas the Tank socks and hat, and had a few Thomas the Tank plastic cars stuffed into his pocket. He also had packed several days worth of clothes into his Thomas the Tank rolling suitcase.

“We’re not staying over,” his mother explained.

“I know,” he responded. “It’s just in case.”

Riding in the cab of BART’s lead car was pretty heady experience for Evan. “He was on an emotional roller coaster all day,” Gordon recalled. “In his mind he was the train operator. He didn’t want me to be there, which obviously I had to be,” she laughed.

From his obsession with trains, Evan moved to animals (especially dogs), and Harry Potter. “He dressed as Harry Potter for two years,” Gordon said. Evan also had an unusual way of communicating through the lyrics of songs and movie dialogue. “He has a very developed rote memory,” his mother explained. “He can watch a movie once and remember the lines. He’d use lines from movies to communicate with me. I had to know what the script was in order to know how to respond to him. If he watched a movie with his dad that I hadn’t seen, I’d have to call him and find out what character I was supposed to play.”

Today, after years of private testing, Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) and loving patience by his mother, Evan is a bright, outgoing student in the fifth grade at Harding Elementary in El Cerrito. As far as Evan has come in the public school sector, his mother doesn’t believe public middle school will be appropriate for his challenges and may not provide the resources Evan needs. “He used to be reclusive, afraid to make eye contact with people, and had difficulty carrying out group activities,” his mother recalled. “To be where he is today is totally amazing. I can’t see having a child come so far and not fulfilling his potential the best way I can. I couldn’t have done that just relying on public institutions. I needed help, and we still have a ways to go.”

One thing that helped was having a job that provided health insurance for her and her family (Jennifer Gordon has another son who worked through dyslexia and today has a full-time job), and a good enough salary to survive in the expensive Bay Area. Prior to her job at BART, Gordon was a bricklayer, building fireplaces, retaining walls, columns and other structures. “That’s was really hard on my body,” she says. “I wanted a job with benefits. I wanted a career.”

She found one as a train operator with BART. Ten hours a day, four days a week, Gordon operates a train on the Richmond to San Francisco run. “Having this job with health care and a decent salary allowed me to stay in the Bay Area, where there are the resources to deal with both of my children’s special needs,” she said gratefully. “Without that he could have ended up reclusive, angry, misdiagnosed. For most kids that haven’t been diagnosed, they go on for years with no hope and end up institutionalized – or something else.”

Jennifer Gordon is surprised that BART’s management has singled out workers like her and told the media that she’s making too much money. “I’m not making an extraordinary amount of money for a single mom with two children,” she believes. “It’s a big challenge for a single parent to be able to afford just living in the area we have to work in, not to mention the different educational resources Evan needs to thrive. With my health plan covering Evan’s health issues, I’ve been able to use some money to pay for the testing that helped him get in the right track. It’s absolutely key to have the means to provide for my children, to give them opportunities to grow beyond what people would expect from their disabilities. I’m grateful for that.”