LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Three years ago, L.J. Hasty never dreamed she’d be doing this!
“I drive a bus!” Hasty laughs. “It’s still kind of shocking.”
The mother of three says she was in an abusive relationship and didn’t feel supported by local police. So, she sent her three sons to live with her mother and fled to Lexington. Leaving everything behind and choosing homelessness over a living hell.
“I’ve lost everything at this point and I don’t want it to all be for nothing,” Hasty says. “That was my reasoning. And every day, I would see this lady driving this bus. She always had words for me, words of wisdom and encouragement. Sometimes she told me stuff I didn’t want to hear, and she would tell me, ‘I’m only telling you this out of love because I see your worth.' And sometimes I didn’t see my own worth.”
That driver – that hero – was Lextran driver Carrie Sullivan.
“I could see past what she was going through and I seen the drive that she had. That’s what drew me to her," Sullivan recalls.
“Sometimes I would just ride around because I had no place else to go. But that was a safe place for me," Hasty says.
Sullivan adds, “I would tell her just hold on, hang in there because there’s something in the end for you.”
On Carrie’s advice, L.J. got her commercial driver's license and today, she’s the one in control, behind the wheel of a Lextran Bus. She feels protected and supported by her newfound family.
“They didn’t look at me any different even though that I was staying in a shelter and what I was going through, but they only seen me looking forward and that was different," says Hasty.
Lextran director of operations and mobility services, Jason Dyal, says that part was easy. “When you see somebody who has that drive, you can’t do nothing but help them and that’s what we done. The small stuff – we can get through that.”
Lextran transportation supervisor William Gill supports that. “We have that family presence here. Everyone looks at others as their family and we try to take care of each other.”
“That’s my girl! I knew she could do it," says Sullivan.
And what would Hasty tell others?
“Try to look within and try to remember who you were before this happened, because that person’s not lost and you can get back to that and you can get better.”
