SPEEDWAY -- Anyone who's been toIMS for a race or a practice, knows the color yellow. On the track yellow means caution, but off the track, these yellow shirts make sure people know where they are going all month long.
“Oh gosh, just the people I’ve met, so many great people. A lot of them are gone. A lot of my good friends are gone. Especially, the guy that got me the job,” Sandy Forrest told WRTV.
Forrest is a supervisor for the yellow shirts, also known as the safety patrol. They make sure people get around the track safely. Forrest tells WRTV she’s been working at the track for the last 32 years.
“I’m retiring this year. This is my last year,” Forrest said.
Despite the long hours, members of the safety patrol will tell you that they keep coming back year after year for the friendships they make.
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“My husband worked here for 25 years, that’s how I got started, we used to come to the race,” Sandy Pickett told WRTV. Pickett tells WRTV that she’s been working at the track for the last 8 years.
“They remembered me, and I remembered them and over time you get to know each other and that’s kind of my goal to make friends,” James Amrhein with the safety patrol said.
Some of the safety patrol team members have traveled farther to work than others like Mark Conarroe.
Conarroe, traveled from Kansas City, Missouri just to work at the track.
“I stay in a trailer during the month of May, they provide hook ups for us for working a lot,” Conarroe told WRTV. They will all they you it’s a job that’s now turned into one big family.
“Just to see the people again and say hi and ask how they are doing, and their families and I brought families in, and I took their kids pictures,” Forrest concluded.
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