Parent life / Three communities, 2019–2025
The Crossing Guard's Sign Said "Need World Series Tix (1 or 2)"
In 2019 an Arlington crossing guard held up a joke request at his post for a week. Sixty families took it literally.
In October 2019, after the Washington Nationals swept the Cardinals and reached the World Series, Jeff Covel, a crossing guard at Nottingham Elementary in Arlington, Virginia, known to the children as Mr. Jeff, held up a homemade sign at his post. It read: "Need World Series tix (1 or 2). For one game only, prefer face value, 'Bucket List.' Mr. Jeff Crossing Guard."
He held it up for a week, as a joke. Tickets were going for upwards of $1,500. He had been planning to try to buy his own.
Meanwhile, around sixty families of the children he had walked across the road for years formed a private Facebook group. In a week they raised more than $2,000. Then a group of kids and parents came marching down the street toward his crossing. He guessed what was up, he told Good Morning America, and started to tear up a little. They handed him two tickets.
I once held up a sign at a school too. It said SLOW, and I was holding it upside down, and the PTA reassigned me to the bake sale.
In Sugar Land, Texas, in May 2020, a crossing guard at Campbell Elementary named Karen Walker, thirteen years on the job, got a birthday parade. A parent organized it because Walker remembers the students' birthdays and sings to them from her crosswalk, every year. "Thirty cars have turned into over a 100 cars," the organizer told KPRC.
I forget my own children's birthdays roughly once every three years. A crossing guard in Texas remembers several hundred, and sings.
Then there are the crossing guards of Los Gatos, California, profiled in 2025 by two student reporters for El Gato News. One took the job because it fit around her late-night security shifts at Apple headquarters: "While the kids are going back to school, I'm sleeping." One, between two daily shifts, hosts American Danish Radio and works as a camera person for South Bay Championship Wrestling. One has been at it thirteen years, because she loves meeting people, and said the best part is "seeing my little ones driving when they get older."
I have a sixteen-year-old with a learner's permit, and I would describe it differently.
Our crossing guard knows the minivan. Every morning she waves the youngest across, then looks at me, then at my coffee, then at the speed limit sign, in that order. I have started holding up a sign of my own. It says, "Need 1 or 2 minutes. Face value."
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Laura Laughead, School crossing guard who loves the Washington Nationals surprised with World Series tickets by students, Good Morning America, October 25, 2019 goodmorningamerica.com
- Brandon Walker, Hundreds of parents, students plan surprise birthday parade for big-hearted crossing guard, KPRC, May 14, 2020 click2houston.com
- Hayley Strahs and Siyona Singhal, Crossing guards support LG, El Gato News, April 7, 2025 elgatonews.com