These days, when you hear a sentence beginning with the words, “It’s my job to…” it’s hard not to think about people enthusiastically enforcing laws that never should have been on the books in the first places, all in the name of occupational security. For many decades, “just doing my job” has been a blanket excuse for blaming one’s actions on someone else. The news is flooded with tales of corruption, violence, terrorism, and evil-doing. And everyone is just “doing their jobs.”
It’s enough to make us begin to lose hope for humanity.
But there are still good people out there who are helping others with no expectation of reward or political gain. There are people who consider “doing their job” to be selflessly doing the right thing.
Renita Smith is one of them.
On Monday, Smith was driving children from Glenarden Woods Elementary School in Maryland home when the dashboard in her bus started beeping.
Then she saw the smoke.
Smith told ABC News that when she stopped the bus and prepared to call for a backup vehicle, she looked in her rear-view mirror and saw flames.
“I put the mic back down, undid my seatbelt, jumped up, got my babies and got off. Once we got off, neighbors kicked right into ‘Mommy mode,’ as I call it, and helped the kids get to a safe haven. When that was going on, I ran back onto the bus to make sure there was no children on the bus. … By the time I got to the last step on the bus, it just went up in smoke.”
After Smith got the 20 children out safely, she climbed back into the blazing bus to make sure no one was left behind.
Fazlul Kabir, who noticed the smoke and went to help, told ABC that neighbors and residents were proud of Smith:
“The bus was completely destroyed by the fire. Without [Smith], the school children couldn’t be actually saved. … She went inside for the very last time. She went inside and checked each seat to see if any of the students were left there. … It’s a fairly long bus actually. It’s not a small bus. She checked if everyone was out and nobody was inside. … She’s brave.”
The fire was reported at about 4:45 p.m Monday in College Park, according to Mark Brady, the public information officer for Prince George’s County, MD Fire and EMS Department.
The official cause of the fire was not known, but authorities said it seemed to originate “near one of the rear wheels” and then spread to the rest of the bus.
People doing good stuff for good reasons. I hope we can find more of this.