Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks, and at the November St. Ann Neighborhood Watch meeting, the police department thanked Drummond Elementary counselor Ms. Carla Robertson with the first-ever Robertson Award. The inaugural presentation of this new community service award is named in her honor.
“The men and women of the department make my job easy because we work together and there's never a hesitation about what we can do for the betterment of kids,” Robertson said. “If I need them to go to the bus stop, they go. I'm having trouble with an attendance issue, they go and motivate the kids to come to school by giving them pencils just because we ask. Who doesn't want to have that kind of support in the community?”
Chief Aaron Jimenez invited Robertson to the front of the meeting that she was attending under false pretenses.
“They made me come up to the front of the room and he went into this whole big thing about my integrity and talked about how much the whole department values me. I wasn't prepared for that,” she said. “I was just really emotional about the whole thing because it's certainly not warranted by any means, and then he said, ‘It’s not just an award for you. We’re naming it after you, too.’”
She said all the work she does is to help kids, and the St. Ann Police Department contributes a lot of support.
“My job is kids. I do whatever I need to do to support kids,” Robertson said. “We help the police department, and they help us. That means working with teachers here, working with parents at home, working with administration in the buildings, and even working with outside agencies. My job is kids, and we work together to help kids.”
She said she’s had a very good relationship with the department and they work together to support the community and the children in it.
“Aaron was our first DARE officer here at Drummond so we've known each other for a long time and he has a passion for kids,” Robertson said. “They help us with kids who have trauma, and they have two new departments over there including a victims department and a mental health department. They're part of our wraparound service team that we have here at Drummond.”
Robertson tries to model the values of her school’s namesake every day she comes to work.
“Our building is named after Bob Drummond who I have the utmost respect for because of his work with children, and I always try to live up to that,” she said. “He worked hard for kids, and if I’m going to work here at this school, then I need to work hard for kids, too.”
The annual award will be presented to someone who, like Robertson, makes a huge difference to St. Ann children.
“I'm not sure what the qualifiers are going to be for that, but I just do what I do because it's the right thing to do,” she said. “It may not always be the easiest thing, but I always try to do the right thing for kids. It was nice that they recognized it, but I can't do my job here without them working with us.”
Nomination information for the 2020 award will be posted in August.
