Farewell to longtime recruiter Monica Caldwell-Reed: ‘It’s so rewarding to offer opportunity to people’

When recruiter Monica Caldwell-Reed retires from RTD next week after 27 years of public service, she will have left an indelible mark on the agency, carried by all the people she has hired – more than 10,000 of them.

Read that number again. Each person in that statistic represents a life changed, an ability to provide for family and, in many cases, the start of a new career. “It means the world to some people – the people I hired, obviously, and that are still here,” Caldwell-Reed said. “It’s so rewarding to be able to do that, to offer opportunity to people.”

The Denver native joined RTD as a part-time bus operator in June 1994, just before the agency began running light rail service. She knew some things about how RTD operated, with an uncle who retired as a bus operator and an aunt who worked in the Board Office. Caldwell-Reed assisted her father for about a year in his print shop, which completed schedules and business cards for the agency. She knew she wanted a career in public service, something that was stable. RTD appealed – and so she stepped away from a 10-year hairdressing career to join the agency. The transition would allow her to be off work Saturdays, enabling her then-7-year-old daughter to enroll in dance and swimming classes.

Caldwell-Reed drove bus Route 44 for 90 days, one of RTD’s longest routes at the time. From there, she moved into the records room, maintaining documents for 2,500 employees as a file custodian. In February 1997, Caldwell-Reed stepped into the position she holds today. What did she know about recruiting before then? “Nothing,” she said. She learned on the job and boosted her skills through involvement with Mountain States Employers Council, which provided courses that RTD paid for.

Looking back on her career, Caldwell-Reed said, “I have great memories. I have so many friends. I have grown up with people here. Those are the things that I think about.” She recalls all of the agency’s openings and all of the people she has known throughout her tenure.

Caldwell-Reed called the best aspect of her work finding managers good employees. When she could fill up an orientation class and make agency leaders happy, she said, that was rewarding. “It’s always a challenge to find the perfect match for that manager,” she said. “You want people to have a place to land where they can stay. It was important to me to make a good match.”

To do that, Caldwell-Reed said, it’s crucial to read people well. And listen, of course – a skill she initially honed as a hairdresser. “In interviews,” she said, “you listen, listen, listen. You hear it all.”

Caldwell-Reed is a self-professed “transportation junkie” who loved seeing the introduction of a new series of buses or listening to her maintenance colleagues discuss new seat covers. “I like that we are moving people,” she said. There’s a satisfaction, she acknowledges, in seeing people she hired inside the cab of a train or behind the wheel of a bus.

As for what’s next, Caldwell-Reed will return to her career roots, styling hair in the salon in her home, taking some courses, attending hair shows. It will be a hobby, she said. She expects to have ample time with her husband, three grown daughters, stepson, son-in-law and two granddaughters. Her family has season tickets to Nuggets games and enjoys annual trips to the Bahamas, where they have a timeshare and have made many friends.

Caldwell-Reed says she wishes she could say goodbye individually to all of the people at RTD whom she has known and loved. She knows it would be emotional. “Maybe I like the people here at RTD because I hired so many of them,” she said, joking. “But I really do. I feel like I’m giving up a part of my family. I’m going to miss everyone.”