There are some people that find it easier than others to put themselves before others. Some examples of this are firefighters, police officers, doctors, and nurses that put others before themselves and even their own families. These people live a life of selflessness and sacrifice so easily that you wonder how they do it! If anyone meets falls into the category of that kind of person, it’s Mike Mason.
Selfless people
Mike is a 63-year-old man from Midlothian, Virginia who has spent his whole life serving others.
A successful career
Mike started his career as a Captain in the Marines. He was very good at his job and eventually found himself working in the FBI once he was out of the military. When he left the FBI, he was at the top of the chain as the No. 4 man in the entire Bureau.
After leaving the FBI in 2007, he went to work at a Fortune 500 company until he eventually retired.
Not ready to retire
You would think that after such an active career, Mike would have been able to rest easy knowing he had done his part in serving others and serving his country. For Mike, however, retirement just wasn’t doing it for him!
“I still had a mind and I still had things I was capable of doing,” he said.
For a guy like Mike, what kind of job would be up to par with his skills and experience?
The perfect job
As you can imagine, most things would be wayyyy under him. Thankfully, he found the perfect thing – driving buses for a local school! That’s right, Mike the ex-FBI-Marine-Fortune-500 man was now going to be driving big yellow buses for a living.
“When I gave them my resume, I actually got called by a very senior person in the county and he said, ‘Just checking, why do you want to be a bus driver?’ And I told him,” Mason said.
Mike saw a need and stepped up to fill it
Schools all across the nation have been facing extreme driver shortages and Mike was willing to step up.
Helping others
The Chesterfield County Public School District, the one where Mike sent his resume, was down 125 drivers for the year. For Mike, there wasn’t anything more important than helping kids get to school!
“I think this is important work, I do,” he said, adding that he believes the work is just as important as what he was doing at the FBI. “I think in our society we need to get next to the idea that there are no unimportant jobs. I mean, what could be more important than the attention we pay to our education system?”
Even more, Mike isn’t taking the salary they are giving him.
Not money motivated
Most people would be happy to pocket the 35k that the school was paying out to the drivers, but it wasn’t about the money for Mike. He decided to take the salary and give it to some charities he likes. Even after achieving things that little kids dream of, he was willing to drive those same kids around for free. It’s a truly selfless sort of thing to do.