From time to time, someone calls TriMet Customer Service to say, “I want to thank a driver who did something really great. I don’t know his name,” the rider admits, “but he looks like Santa.” At this, one name snaps into focus: Hillsboro resident Bob Foster, a TriMet bus operator since 1981.

Bob first donned the red suit more than 25 years ago—“when I had to use a little white shoe polish to gray up my beard”—for a holiday party at TriMet’s Merlo garage in Beaverton. For a while, he shared the honor of playing Merlo Santa with a couple of other operators.

“The spirit of Santa is the gift of wonder. The feeling that I am trying to exude is that it is OK for us to expect good things to come our way.” — Santa Bob

But as the years rolled by, Santa service became a bigger part of Bob’s life. He started scheduling his vacations so that “Santa Bob” could visit families all over the metro area. His stops include a local tree farm, Breakfast with Santa in Mitchell, a toy store in Northeast Portland, and the Hillsboro School District’s holiday party for the Life Skills Classrooms.

Want to know where Santa Bob will be visiting next? Like his Facebook page

By now, it’s a Merlo employee tradition to bring your children, or your grandchildren, or somebody else’s children to visit Santa in the drivers’ break area. A bus garage can be a busy, gritty place, but on Santa’s lap next to the tree, the only thing that matters is the children’s hopes and dreams for the holidays.

To Bob, “The spirit of Santa is the gift of wonder. The feeling that I am trying to exude is that it is okay for us to expect good things to come our way.”

Bob displays this spirit—along with the apple cheeks and snowy beard—every day in the driver’s seat. He says, “We operators are the attitude of Portland. Each morning, I’ve got about 100 people who are going to reflect all day on our interaction. Maybe it’s conscious, maybe it’s unconscious, but at some point in the day they’re going to remember the nice operator who maybe brought a little joy and humor into their day.”

It should be noted that Bob Foster isn’t the only TriMet employee who’s especially attuned to the spirit of Santa. Dave Kay in bus maintenance and Shirley Block in field operations are said to be responsible for Mr. and Mrs. Claus’ attendance at the union holiday party.

But if you’re on the bus and hear Westside high schoolers yelling, “Where’s your reindeer?” or a wide-eyed Washington County child whispering, “It’s him!” there’s a good chance you’re riding with “Santa Bob” Foster.

TALK ABOUT IT: Discuss this post on Facebook

VIDEO: See the feature about Santa Bob on KOIN Local 6

Photo by Alysha Beck

It is a typical morning in the Portland metro area with buses, cars, bikes and pedestrians maneuvering the streets for their commute. A call comes over the radio from dispatch: “Doc, there’s a bird on the road and we need you to rescue it.”

A TriMet employee since 1986, Ron “Doc” Chambers has gone above and beyond the boundaries of his job description. In addition to being an outstanding bus operator, rail operator and trainer, he has been the call guy for all injured animals TriMet employees come across, both at home and on the job. Doc credits his childhood, which he spent in rural areas of England and Spain with very few veterinarians, for his passion for birds and other animals.

Doc has rescued animals for operators, supervisors, neighbors and even the Portland Police. He repaired the cracked shell of a turtle that got hit by a MAX train, got a hawk out from the rafters of a rail garage, and saved countless pigeons from the side of the road that empathetic bus operators called him about. Outside of TriMet calls, Doc mainly rescues parakeets, which he saves and keeps until he can find them ‘forever homes.’

In his first year as a TriMet operator, Doc was driving  his bus through North Portland when a call came over the radio that a pigeon had been hit by a bus and no one knew how to help it. He got on the radio and said that if someone could deliver the pigeon to him, he could nurse her back to health. “The next day, I came back into work and my supervisor said, ‘Well, you’re just a regular Doc Chambers!’ The name stuck,” he says. He repaired the bird’s broken wing, cared for her punctured lung, and years later she died of old age with Doc and his wife at their home.

In the early 2000s, degenerating eyesight forced Doc to transition into a training role, but it hasn’t stopped him from saving animals. Just last week Doc found a dog wandering the storage yard at TriMet’s Ruby Junction facility. She was malnourished and had sores. Unable to care for her at home, Doc found fellow training supervisor David White to nurse her back to health. David and his family have since adopted her and named her Daisy.

TALK ABOUT IT: Discuss this post on Facebook.

Maya Trachtenberg

Written by Maya Trachtenberg, TriMet summer intern

Maya Trachtenberg is an undergraduate from University of Washington, who grew up in Portland and on TriMet. She was a summer journalist for the Jewish Review newspaper, and had an internship doing writing and public relations for the Portland Fire Bureau. During her internship at TriMet, Maya interviewed transit riders and TriMet employees for internal and promotional  publications.

Alysha Beck

Photo by Alysha Beck, TriMet summer intern

Alysha Beck is a photojournalism graduate from University of Oregon. She has interned for The Oregonian, YH! World (a London-based online magazine), and was a freelance photographer for Long Run Picture Company in Eugene, Oregon. As an intern for TriMet, Alysha took pictures and videos of riders, operators, and management for internal  and promotional publications. Alysha is now a staff journalist at Coos Bay and Southern Oregon Coast’s newspaper, The World.