Metromance: Two operators who share love–and a career–at Metro!

Claudia Garcia Rodriguez was working as a Metro Access driver back in 2009 when she met this really nice guy, the friend of a cousin.

The pair hit it off immediately, in a friendly sort of way. He needed to find a new place to stay, and she offered to rent him a room in her mobile home.

Boom.

The friendly feeling grew into a romance, then to marriage, then finally to a dual Metro career as operators. Call them a terrific transit couple.

Claudia recalls that when she met Francisco Garcia Hernandez, he was working in a warehouse and as a painter, while she worked for Access, a job she thoroughly enjoyed. She thought transit might be a good fit for Francisco as well.

“One day I was driving and there was a commercial about school buses and how they were hiring on the spot,” she said. Francisco did get hired on the spot, and the job gave him great flexibility in the summers after their two sons came along. He loved working with kids.

Meanwhile, Claudia ran into a former Access Paratransit colleague who was now wearing a Metro vest. That friend, who had become an operator, urged her to apply to the agency. The friend helped her apply, and Claudia got hired. She loved the clear career path and benefits.

I told my husband to apply,” she said. “He didn’t want to–he was comfortable driving with kids. He was working on the recruiting team, hiring school bus drivers, and it was all very comfortable. But I told him ‘You need to build your nest, earn a pension.’ ”

Francisco eventually applied and got hired. Today, Claudia drives RapidRide A Line days and Francisco drives Routes 150 and 160 at night. Both work out of Metro’s South Base.

“We have to do this for the kids,” she said she said of their opposing schedules. They try to see each other every day for some couple-time in the South Base bullpen, the lobby for operators. “We visit, and I finish my lunch with him and then I come home.”

This year marks 15 years together. The couple married Aug. 27, 2011, and live in South King County with sons Xavier, 12, and Alexander, 10. Claudia also has a young adult daughter “who just left the nest.”

These days, the couple loves adventuring together, and their trips have included Phoenix, Tuscan, San Diego, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and they’re just back from Cancun.

Later this year? It couldn’t be more romantic. “We’re off to London and Paris,” Claudia says.