Army Reserves Vet Fit to be Hired

Sutherland #AmtrakVets

After three years in the Army Reserves, Natoya knew she could never return to a desk job.

“After I came back from basic training I was physically fit,” she says. “I was in the best shape of my life.”

So when an Amtrak recruiter found Natoya’s resume on CareerBuilder.com and asked her to apply online to be an officer in Amtrak’s police force, she took the opportunity and (shall we say) ran with it.

“I took the physical fitness test in Maryland,” Natoya says. “It wasn’t too hard, but I was already in good shape from the military.”

Stamina isn’t the only thing Natoya brought to the Amtrak Police Department from the military. “The skills that transferred to Amtrak for my job were combat training, discipline, communication and of course being on time.”

Natoya’s typical day includes patrolling different Amtrak stations, ensuring that the traveling public is safe and also looking for suspicious behavior.

“My favorite part is knowing that each day when I go home, I know that I’ve helped,” she says, “I’ve protected the passengers and the other employees.”

Natoya often works at Washington Union Station, where more than 5 million passengers board and alight Amtrak trains each year.

Despite the challenge of securing the company’s second busiest station, Natoya says, “Washington, D.C., is my favorite, because the people I work with are great there.”

In a continued effort to support the nation’s service men and women, Amtrak has set a goal of ensuring 25 percent of its new hires are veterans by 2015. Amtrak is the nation’s passenger railroad, serving more than 31 million passengers annually and 500 destinations nationwide. For more information, visit Amtrak.com/VeteransCareers.