Jerri Sue Scott – Signature

With her steady hands stationed on the wheel at nine and three o’clock, Jerri Scott pulls her sedan into a parking space outside of a quiet row of red brick apartments. On one front door hangs a sign: “No smoking.”

“That’s because of the oxygen tank,” Scott says.

“Shirley, I’m outside,” she calls out into her cell phone. A former bus driver for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Scott retired in 2008 after 26 years of duty. A year later she heard about American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program and decided to take the wheel again. Twice a week she drives patients to and from radiation and chemotherapy treatments, and every Friday she calls other volunteers and helps organize the following week’s schedule.

“Now I have one in the car with me,” Scott says. “I used to have 60.”

Road to Recovery provided nearly 1,000 rides to 45 Baton Rouge-area patients from September 2010 through August 2011, but Scott says the need for drivers is great.

On this bright winter Monday morning, Scott opens the passenger door for Shirley, who ducks her reddish bob of a wig into the vehicle as her tan windbreaker swallows her stick-thin frame.

“Did your son come up this weekend?” Scott asks.

“No,” Shirley says softly, her breathing tube tucked neatly behind her ears. “He was busy.”

The ride is quiet, with only the hum of rubber treading on pavement and the short pfft sounds of oxygen whispering in the car. Scott asks Shirley if she’s been eating—she has been—but not much else. “I like to let them talk, let them lead,” Scott says later. “You never know how bad the cancer is.”

Scott had her own cancer scare in 2010 when doctors found a lump in her breast. It was detected early and is now gone, but even then, after three back surgeries, the retired mother of three never stopped driving.

“Thank you, Miss Jerri,” Shirley says, exiting the car outside of Pennington Cancer Center.

“I’m just going to park,” Scott calls after her. “I’m not going to leave you.”