"As a traffic officer, every day brings something interesting," Rubye Forrest-Mickel says, sitting on her porch on Barrett Avenue, enjoying the early spring weather. As she reclines in her chair, her lips curve into a smile.
"During the (Mal's) St. Paddy's Parade a few years ago, we were trying to keep people from crossing over a barrier, and a man got so excited he jumped up on my car and started jumping around," she says. "He almost tore it up."
Most days on the job, however, are filled with cooperative pedestrians. "It's fun to be here. I enjoy helping everybody," she says.
Forrest-Mickel has been a downtown traffic officer with the Jackson Police Department for almost 13 years. In her line of work, she writes parking tickets, answers general questions about parking and gives directions to pedestrians.
She writes 50 to 100 parking tickets a day, most of them for expired meters. "People complain about how bad the roads are, but then they don't want to support Jackson by paying for parking," she says.
Many times, Forrest-Mickel says, she finds herself doing things that are outside her job description.
"I'll answer questions about where to find a job, or help someone who's thirsty find some water, just different things that keep the job interesting," she says. "Sometimes if someone tells us they're hungry, we'll even bring them inside a restaurant and get them some food. And sometimes people just need someone to talk to."
Asked about her favorite part of the job, she says: "Meeting the people and helping the people."
She also loves her colleagues. "We have really good working relationships with our supervisors," she says. She even goes so far as to call one of her supervisors "precious" because of how polite he is in giving orders.
Forrest-Mickel was born the second of five children in 1951 in Winona, Miss. She moved from Winona to Jackson in 1977 after she decided she wanted to become a police officer. Once she got here, she changed her mind and became a Hinds County Head Start teacher. After two decades of teaching, she determined in 1998 that she wanted to try something different, so she became a traffic officer.
"It's been a fun ride," she says of her latest career.
Forrest-Mickel is married to Walter Mickel. She is a mother to four and a grandmother to 11. The 60-year-old has no plans to retire anytime soon, though. She still works Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"I'm not slowing down; I'm picking up," she says.
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