Ms. Robin’s corner: A Tampa crossing guard’s mission for a safe walk to school

Nov 14, 2023

TAMPA — With a toot of her whistle, Robin Graham raised her hand and held back a column of cars as children trudged across a road she calls “NASCAR Avenue.”

She is their 5-foot-1-inch protector, clad in a sun hat and a neon vest, one of the 273 crossing guards spread across Hillsborough County, where pedestrians are killed at a rate three times as high as other similarly sized counties nationwide. Her task this February morning was the same as every weekday during the school year: Give kids a safe path to the classroom.

“This is my ministry,” she said, overlooking nine lanes of traffic at the Tampa intersection of Florida and Linebaugh avenues, three corners flanked with gas stations and the other with a car dealership. “My little ministry.”

Her parish: Anyone who walks, wheels or rolls through this frenetic streetscape, forced to traverse multiple lanes, dodge blocked sidewalks and sidestep whizzing scooters.

Her gospel: Everyone should have a safe place to cross and someone to ask, How are you?

So Graham, 57, smiles and waves, and she sighs when a truck barrels through a red light without pause, again. And just as the last backpack-slung child makes it to the other side, the cars clear their throats as the light flicks green, sending them roaring down the road.

Nearly 40% of Hillsborough County residents live in communities without low-cost, safe access to walking, bicycling or transit infrastructure, according to county data. Residents navigate roads with the highest fatality rate per capita among large counties in the United States.

“Ideally, we would love to provide crossing guards at all schools or anywhere children are crossing. However, this is not possible,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Melissa Kincheloe. Each request for a guard is evaluated with a three-day onsite survey, observing roadway safety, traffic conditions and pedestrian patterns.

The Sheriff’s Office offers a starting hourly rate of $14.34, almost $8 less than guards make across the bay in Pinellas. There are 23 crossing guard vacancies in Hillsborough, down from 47 at the start of the school year.

Graham has been the guardian of her corner for three years. To understand why she rises before dawn to stand beside traffic loud and close, understand this: She grew up wanting to be three things: “a good wife, a good mother and a good Christian.”

She had a miscarriage and then another, and decided she couldn’t put her mind and body through trying again.

She agreed when an aunt told her: “There are plenty of kids out there that need your love and attention.”

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So in 2007, she became a school bus driver, just like her mother, and brought snacks and clothes for students she could tell were in need.

Monroe, her husband and best friend, died in 2019. After that, the bus was just “a bit too much.” But Graham wanted to remain around children and still needed to work.

So now she guards two intersections along Florida Avenue, for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Beside sunbaked concrete, she listens to tales of pop quizzes, new friendships and coming-of-age angst in a city where, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 44 people die and 289 experience life-altering injuries on the roads in an average year.

The percentage of schoolchildren who drive or are driven to school has more than tripled in the past 40 years, according to federal data. The percentage of students who walk or bike to school has shrunk by a similar amount. Research has shown that decisions about walking and biking to school are strongly linked to parents’ concerns over pedestrian safety, especially for young children.

Tampa parent Emily Hinsdale founded nonprofit Sidewalk Stompers in 2016, and today it partners with 10 county schools, encouraging families to ditch their car for the school run and build pedestrian safety.

“Our goal is to incentivize more families to try walking and biking to school and start to change the entire transportation landscape around schools so they become a hub for safe walking and biking, rather than a couple of kids trying to dart through a gigantic, asthma-producing car line,” she said. “There is safety in numbers.”

In 2017, the Hillsborough County Public Schools eliminated busing for students living within a 2-mile radius, and the county launched a “herculean effort” to improve safe routes to school, said Hillsborough spokesperson Chris Wilkerson.

The county added a transportation safety and mobility engineer, said director of engineering and operations Joshua Bellotti, part of a broader focus on safety.

“We’re also focusing on low-cost countermeasures — things that we can implement quickly, but will make meaningful improvements,” he said. Such measures include flashing beacons, improved crosswalk markings and sidewalk maintenance.

Still, broken sidewalks, poor signage and treacherous roads abound. A 2022 report from the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety found Florida has some of the fewest roadway safety laws in the country and in 2018, according to analytics and transportation safety platform Zendrive, Florida was named the second-most dangerous state when it comes to driving in school zones.

Last year, legislation that would have allowed Florida school districts to install speed detection cameras in school zones died in the state Senate, after drawing broad support from law enforcement and road safety advocates and passing the Senate Committee on Education unanimously. Drivers caught on camera traveling 10 mph or more over the limit in an active school zone would have faced a $158 fine under the proposed law, Senate Bill 410. Similar bills, HB 657 and SB 588, have been introduced this legislative session.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently announced $20 million for Tampa to implement sidewalks and safety measures — like streetlight upgrades, separated bike lanes and speed zone flashers — near several schools, parks and transit routes.

Buttigieg also announced $19.7 million in federal funds for Hillsborough’s “data-driven equitable transportation safety programs.” The money will be used to install sidewalks, curbs, bike lanes and speed management strategies at 22 county locations.

Meanwhile, crossing guards like Graham stand at a corner, shepherding the wide-eyed and the sleepy-eyed and offering a listening ear to anyone in need. Here the sidewalks and bus shelters are often dotted with people seeking homes, employment and companionship. She prays for them in her down time. She keeps an eye out for job openings for them.

A school bus rolls through, and she waves. Soon follows an SUV filled with smiling faces, and she waves again. Then another, calling, “Hey, Ms. Robin!”

As the rain clouds lift and sunshine soaks the corner, two students amble over and hand her a potted plant, which would soon sit on the coffee table of the home she shares with her 85-year-old mother. It was School Crossing Guard Appreciation Day. That morning, Graham received two Publix gift cards. She gave one away.

Her first shift of the afternoon wound down. She placed her sign in a bag and used her umbrella as a cane to reach the approaching bus.

“Love ya,” she called out, to anyone at the corner who could hear. And with that she boarded the bus, heading to another busy intersection where there would be more children who needed her.