Tomas Reyes, 49, has been a BART operator for fifteen years. For the last nine, he has run the 6:14 a.m. out of Daly City three days a week.
On all three of those days, a woman in her early 60s, wearing a yellow scarf and a long camel coat, gets on at the second car at Glen Park and rides to Embarcadero. She sits in the same forward-facing seat. She always has a paperback book.
“I do not know her name,” Tomas says. “I have never spoken to her. She has never spoken to me. She has been on my train almost every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning for nine years.”
Tomas estimates he has seen this woman more than 1,300 times. He noticed her in 2017 because of the scarf, which has not changed. He noticed her in 2020 because she was the only weekly regular who never missed a single shift during the pandemic. She wore an N95. She kept reading.
“In 2022 she had a sling on her arm for six weeks,” he says. “I worried about her. She kept getting on. The sling came off. The book changed. We have never spoken.”
I asked Tomas if he thought he should introduce himself. He said he had thought about it many times.
“There is a kind of relationship that exists because two people leave it alone,” he said. “I think we are that. If I say hello, the relationship ends. So I never have.”
On the day I rode with him, the woman in the yellow scarf got on at 6:23 a.m. at Glen Park. She sat down. She opened a book by Annie Dillard. She did not look up at the cab. Tomas, in the operator booth at the front, watched her in the small mirror that lets him see the second car.
“Good morning,” he said quietly, to himself. The doors closed.
