Meet Bill Ortiz
His name might not be one you recognize, but his face is! People don't have much reason for asking his name.
Bill's face is synonymous with the little green shed in the parking lot in downtown Evergreen where he stops drivers, inquires their destination, and hands them a ticket to be validated by merchants for parking there. Sometimes he just motions a person through, recognizing familiar faces and knowing their destination to be Java Groove, the bank, or Beau Jo's. After awhile, he just knows....
"The people [in Evergreen] are great," he says. "After dealing with hundreds each week, there's occasionally one who's rude but usually everyone's really nice. I enjoy seeing my customers at the lake concerts."
The parking lot is owned and maintained by the Ross-Lewis Trust for its tenants along Main Street, and Bill is an employee of a larger operation that staffs parking assistance at the Pepsi Center in Denver. He started at the Pepsi Center in 1999 but was reassigned to Evergreen 7 1/2 years ago. He commutes here from his home in Aurora to work Saturdays and Sundays.
In 2008 Bill retired from 36 years of civil service, working at Lowry Air Force Base for the Department of Defense in finance and accounting. Earlier in his career he'd worked at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Fitzsimmons Army Hospitals.
"I was born at Fitzsimmons in 1949," he says proudly. "It's not often a person gets to work where he was born."
When he's not monitoring the parking lot in downtown Evergreen, he's hanging out with his grandchildren, watching his grandson, Reese, up to 12 hours/day 5 days/week or shuttling 14-year-old Joslyn to and from school and activities.
