After 50-plus years, one of RTD’s longest-serving employees has retired: ‘I’ve seen every change’

In working for an employer as dynamic as RTD, every individual at the agency can say they have experienced a lot of change. One colleague among us, Terry Vicek, has lived the entirety of RTD’s history – because his career in public transit predates the agency’s operations. Vicek, an undercover ride monitor, retired last month after providing more than five decades of service to the Denver metro region.

The agency’s Human Resources record for Vicek encompasses 52 years and 2 months with RTD. He estimates he worked for Denver Tramway Company, which preceded RTD, for two years. Vicek believes he is the agency’s longest-serving employee.

“All the time I’ve spent here, I’ve seen every change,” recalled Vicek, who is now 79 and lives in Morrison. “Every change in buses, every building that RTD owns being built. I got to watch it grow up. I got to watch it turn into one of the best transit systems in the world. And what it’s turned into to me is astronomical.”

Vicek most recently monitored bus operators to ensure they followed safety protocols and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. His retirement from the agency last month is his second: He first said goodbye to RTD as a division manager at East Metro after 36 years. The agency’s base in Aurora “was my home, and they were my people, and I took care of them,” Vicek said of the hundreds of employees stationed there.

How do you look after that many people?

“Everybody is an individual. Nobody is the same,” Vicek said. “I went out every day and talked to the drivers. I would go down to maintenance and talk with them. The janitor would come and sit in my office every morning and have a cup of coffee. These are the people that do the work of RTD.”

Vicek began his career in public transit in 1971 at the suggestion of his father-in-law, who was a trolley driver for Denver Tramway. Vicek was managing a paint store at the time, and the transit provider’s starting wage was higher than what he was earning at the retail business. While change was coming to Denver Tramway – its assets and operations were later sold to the City and County of Denver, and became known as Denver Metro Transit until 1974, when RTD assumed operations – Vicek decided to give public transportation a try.

He began his transit career as a bus operator, a role Vicek held for 15 years. He gained a reputation for being reliable and dedicated to serving the public. With his experience, Vicek soon became a driving instructor, training new colleagues in safety and precision. He estimates he taught more than 1,000 people to drive a bus.

One of the first buses Vicek drove was a 1958 Mack, “a box with a steering wheel,” he said. Vicek sat in one such vehicle at RTD’s Bus Roadeo earlier this year, and his wife, Patsy, snapped a photo of him in the driver’s seat. The bus had an air gauge and a turn signal – and lacked power steering, a heater and air conditioning.

The biggest challenge, Vicek said, lay in navigating narrow Denver streets on some of his routes. “I remember one street where I had 6 to 8 inches on either side to go down there,” he said. “If somebody parked out half an inch, you couldn’t go.” In 1985, Vicek’s exceptional driving skills earned him a win at the agency’s Bus Roadeo.

Colleagues at RTD took note of Vicek’s leadership, and he rose through the ranks, becoming an assistant division manager at every Bus Operations division and, later, a division manager, overseeing hundreds of drivers and ensuring smooth operations. He opened Platte and East Metro.

In every role he had at RTD, his colleagues attest, Vicek carried a reputation for being fair, kind and straightforward – and an advocate for his people. At every division, he said, he improved on-time performance and reduced accidents, absenteeism and employee issues. Vicek preferred to meet with people around a table rather than behind a desk, “because a desk means power,” he said. When an operator made a mistake, he asked what would be done to fix it and coached with an aim that the employee return to work.

Vicek is proud of the contributions he has made to RTD. That pond at East Metro? That was Vicek’s idea. He thought the operators deserved a nicer outdoor break area than the kiddie pool placed there for the ducks. For two to three months, Vicek and a handful of maintenance colleagues shoveled dirt into a wheelbarrow during breaks to dig a permanent pond. The nearly-5-foot-deep division feature is now permanent, with a liner, landscaping and fish.

In the training department, Vicek and his colleagues developed the lift system that is on RTD’s buses. He was sent to Fort Collins to train the city’s bus operators, most of whom were college students, and bus maintenance staff.

When he went into management, Vicek represented RTD for years with NESRA, the National Employee Service and Recreation Association, and served as its president. He organized a well-attended annual barbecue at East Metro; planned employee picnics and ski trips to Arapahoe Basin, Eldora, Loveland and Winter Park resorts; and was a founding member of the RTD color guard, seen at parades, event openings and employee funerals.

“In my heart, I feel that I contributed to almost every faction of RTD somewhere along the line,” Vicek said.

When snow closed Denver in March 2003, during the city’s second-largest snowstorm recorded by the National Weather Service, Vicek was at East Metro when it began. He sent employees to King Soopers to buy hot dogs, hamburgers, beans, potato salad and breakfast foods. Requested service was sent out, employees slept at the division during the four-day weather event – and everyone had a hearty meal to eat. “My people were happy,” Vicek said. “It’s little things like that that I’ve done for 50 years that I remember.”

Much has changed over several decades. When Vicek was first hired to drive a bus, his colleagues were all older men – there were no women. Fast-forward many years, and “the year after I won the Roadeo, the person who beat me out of first place was a female, and she’s a hell of a driver,” he said fondly.

Vicek has watched every corner of the region change. Denver’s Lower Downtown once held a feeling that “it was from back in the 1800s,” he said. “Larimer (Street) had the nicer buildings.”

One thing that has remained the same throughout Vicek’s career: “The public doesn’t have any concept of what it takes to run a bus company.” Open houses he ran at Platte Division, he said, generated countless questions from customers.

With his departure from RTD, Vicek said he will miss everyone dearly. He calls his colleagues close family members, given the long-term relationships they hold. Each of a part of his history.

“I owe everything in my life to this company,” Vicek concluded. “I don’t have any complaints. No matter what you do here, it’s a steady company. I never had to worry about a job, and you’ve got to work somewhere.”