Metro Transit driver gives passenger shoes off her feet
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - A Metro Transit bus driver literally gave the shoes off her feet on Friday to help one of her passengers get comfortable.
To her frequent passengers, Jayne Arendt-Verhelst is known as the happy driver.
"I got a couple of characters on there that I say 'hi' to every day," the 57-year-old bus driver told FOX 9.
She nicknames a lot of them, too.
On the 54 route, there’s 'Oklahoma', who doesn’t like tornadoes, and 'Nikki Sixx' who looks like a member of Motley Crüe.
And now there’s The Narc, who launched her to viral fame.
"You've really made this go crazy," she told Sarah Seldon on Wednesday in their first meeting since the noteworthy Friday ride.
Sarah was near the back of the bus when it made an unexpected stop on West 7th in St. Paul.
Jayne had opened her door for an unhoused woman who had stepped into the street and held up her arm.
"She actually looked like she walked off a disaster movie," Jayne said.
Sarah noticed the woman didn’t have any shoes and heard the driver talking to her about it.
She thought maybe the woman was about to get kicked off the bus, but Jayne had a surprise for her.
"She's like, ‘wait, hold on,' and she just like swings," Seldon said. "And I just see these shoes coming off."
The woman walked off the bus a few stops later with Jayne’s size 10 Skechers on her size 7 feet.
Sarah’s only a couple of months off the streets herself, so she understands the dignity a pair of shoes can deliver and the hope those shoes might represent.
"I hope that, like, just her being seen in that moment is a little bit of suffering and gave her a little bit of hope because that kind of receiving kindness and hope can actually be a thing that propels you towards choosing to get help," Seldon said.
So before the bus drove away, she hopped on Reddit and reported what she saw.
A cascade of compliments followed for all bus drivers, but especially Jayne.
"I was just like, 'Oh boy, I'm going to be in so much trouble,'" said Arendt-Verhelst.
Jayne never got in trouble, but she drove the rest of her route that night in her socks.
She recently stopped a bus to tend to a dying dog, and Friday wasn’t the first time she let a passenger board when they shouldn’t.
She’s now earning a reputation for bending the rules for all the right reasons.
"Everybody asks me every day I get off work, 'Have you got your shoes on? You got your shoes on? Did you give your shoes away?'" she said between laughs. "Stop it, stop it, stop it.
You can report Metro Transit drivers' good deeds (or their bad ones) here: