During her decades as a professional driver, Betty Murrell, 77, has operated 18-wheelers, school buses and city buses. However, it was a recent journey that may prove to be the most memorable of her career.
A driver for Atria Senior Living’s Hillcrest community in Thousand Oaks, California, Murrell most days delivers residents to appointments or takes them on errands or other outings, such as trips to the theater or a museum. Sometimes, she takes them on scenic rides. One of her favorites is driving them to the Pacific Ocean. They park alongside the beach, Murrell opens the doors and windows, and they all sit there and smell the sea air and listen to the waves hitting against the sand. “They love it so much,” she said. “It delights my heart.”
On Jan. 7 this year, Murrell had driven a couple of her usual routes in the morning, taking residents back and forth to their appointments. Of course, she was aware of the wildfires that had erupted in the Los Angeles area, but she did not expect them to affect her usual routine. Then, however, she was told that Atria needed help evacuating residents of the operator’s community in Pacific Palisades, a part of L.A. badly hit by fire. Murrell was quick to volunteer.
“As a commercial driver, I feel that we’re considered first responders under those conditions,” Murrell said.
Murrell ensured the bus was full of gas and headed east toward Pacific Palisades. Her sense of the fire’s creeping presence and its far-reaching, disruptive impact on L.A.’s residents became palpable.
“It felt eerie driving there, because my bus was about the only thing going in that direction,” she said. “Everyone else I saw was stop-and-go and going in the opposite direction.”
Murrell’s GPS kept redirecting her from her planned route to avoid the assortment of roadblocks that police had established to keep vehicles from the most dangerous areas. Once she arrived at Atria Park of Pacific Palisades, Murrell found staff members ensuring that the proper paperwork was prepared, food and other necessities had been packed and those residents who needed walkers had them. Residents wore coats as protection against the severe winds whipping around outside.
Murrell and team members helped 10 memory care residents load onto the bus, along with two caretakers. Each resident needed a wheelchair, so they had to be boarded individually with a ramp and then assisted to their seats.
“In getting the people on and off the buses, they, of course, were afraid,” Murrell said. “Some of them hadn’t been on the bus before. It was a challenge for them. All I could think to do was to get on the ramp with them and put my arms around them and tell them, ‘Don’t worry. I got you.’ And some of them squeezed me back. I made sure they were wrapped up good. I was just focused on them and making sure that they were OK.”
Murrell said she would later learn that the fire had reached very close to the community at the time that the group was boarding the bus.
As she drove north toward Atria’s community in Tarzana, Murrell discovered that the residents were very confused about what was happening. In fact, she said one of them remarked, “It really would be nice if the driver would tell us what city we’re in if you’re going to take us on a tour.” Murrell, however, was relying on GPS to guide her and was not sure herself about her immediate surroundings at times. Then, though, she saw a sign for Santa Monica and an impromptu tour began.
“I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering Santa Monica,’ and I started pointing out the buildings and how beautiful they were,” she said. “One building had cut glass all over it, and I pointed that out. And they had no idea what we were really doing, which was better because we didn’t want them panicking.”
Murrell estimates that a drive that typically would have taken 30 minutes instead took between two and two-and-a-half hours. Traffic was barely moving wherever they went. Ultimately, however, they reached the Atria community in Tarzana. There, the residents were fed and freshened up and got some rest. Then, they were boarded again onto a charter bus and taken to a hotel in Agoura Hills where Atria’s team had set up a temporary home
for residents. The bumper-to-bumper drive was often harrowing.
“By that time, the winds were just horrible,” Murrell said. “They were pushing the bus hard. At one point, I was driving on the outside lane of the freeway, and there was a tree that was falling over on the side of the freeway. It landed in the lane that I was in. I had cars all around me and couldn’t get over anywhere and I couldn’t stop in time, so I had to go through it. We made it through, but I did a little damage to the bus.”
At the hotel, Murrell helped the residents get off the bus and get into their hotel rooms. Finally, around 11:30 p.m., she clocked out, more than 14 hours after her day had started. She returned to the hotel the next morning to make sure her new friends were doing well.
For her bravery and hard work, Murrell recently received the 2025 Argentum Hero Awards’ Emergency Response Leadership Award – a national recognition of individuals who lead with strength and compassion during emergencies.
Murrell said she feels fortunate that she was able to block out the severity and scale of the fire during the evacuation, instead feeling focused on the residents and “just doing my job.”
“Once you’ve worked with the residents a bit, you fall in love with them,” Murrell said. “At my age, I can relate to them, too. I can relate to their aches and to everything else about being older. So I’ve become good friends with the residents, and they’re sort of like family to me.”
Past health problems have positioned Murrell to embrace her role with Atria and its residents, she said. Murrell had cancer in 1982, leading to two major surgeries 10 weeks apart. She still feels grateful to have survived the ordeal and to have lived to see her granddaughters born and grown up. Later, in 2013, Murrell says her body “went toxic,” leading to a month-long hospital stay and the use of a walker. Today, though, Murrell said she is agile and healthy and keenly aware of how fortunate she is to feel that way. In fact, Murrell points to her health troubles as important preparation for her work today – as almost a blessing.
“I know what it feels like to need someone to help you to bathe, to help you to brush your teeth, to comb your hair. I know what it is to need someone to help you and you not being able to help yourself. I know what it feels like. It’s not a good feeling,” said Murrell, who has worked for Atria since November 2023. “In my mind, I felt like I was a burden. So I try to bond with the residents and make sure they know they’re not a burden. ‘I’m here. I’m a part of your amenities. You’re paying for me to be here to help you and to take you where you need to go, and it’s my pleasure to be here to help you. I can identify with where you are.’ That gives me a feeling of purpose.”
Murrell said she considers herself one of the residents and believes that helps her serve them – and made her particularly well equipped to usher memory care residents to safety when the stakes were high.
“They need to know that they’re loved,” she said. “They need to know that this is not just a job for me. They mean a lot to me.”