BART agent fired for giving tickets to needy teen BART

When a 16-year-old boy was struggling to pay for his commute to school, BART station agent Jim Stanek gave him $300 in paid, unused tickets - and lost his job for it.

On Tuesday, his 66th birthday, he received a letter informing him he was fired.

"I feel devastated," the Novato resident, who worked for BART for seven years, told The Chronicle.

The transit system handed down its decision a week and a half after a hearing in which Stanek defended a situation that began this spring.

The 16-year-old, whose father died last year, was getting into trouble and performing poorly at a public school in Hercules. His grandparents, who live in Oakley and had stepped in to care for him, sent him to Flex Academy, a charter high school in San Francisco, where he is a junior and pulling better grades.

But the grandparents, a retired salesman and nurse, said they had trouble paying for him to get there. A round-trip ticket from the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART Station to the Powell Street BART Station costs about $11, which totals about $220 a month.

Stanek, a friend of the grandfather's, thought he could help. In the Daly City booth where he worked, there was $300 worth of paid, unused tickets. They were left behind, he said, by commuters who did not have a ticket when they exited the station and bought new ones they then gave to station agents.

Stanek said he gave the tickets to the teenager as an act of "benevolence," but was aware it broke the rules. He believed the tickets would be thrown away, he said. When the young rider was stopped by station agents, he explained where he got the passes, and Stanek was ultimately fired.

"Did I expect it? Yes," he said. "It's kind of the way things go with BART. I don't know if public opinion matters to them - it doesn't, I guess."

Stanek said he plans to appeal the decision through his union. He said the union will allow him to keep his health care and pension, whose amount he declined to state, for up to five years. Last year, his income was about $95,000.

Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, declined to comment on Stanek's situation because it is a personnel matter. But, he said, the transit system's policy is simple: No tickets are thrown away.

BART periodically collects unused tickets and deposits their value into the general fund, which pays for train operations and workers' salaries, Allison said. In March, BART collected nearly $10,000 this way, he said.

"I would hope that most people know that we don't have a culture of waste, that we are very much interested in making sure our customers know they're getting the best value for their dollar," Allison said. "That includes fiscal responsibility - tracking where all the tickets and all the money goes."

BART also administers a program called Tiny Tickets, which allows riders to donate unused tickets to a charity of their choice.

The transit system also offers students in participating schools a 50 percent discount on their school commutes. Flex Academy is enrolled in the program, said Royce Conner, head of the school, who did not know whether the 16-year-old rider was aware of it.

"It's great to hear that someone on BART was looking at this student, who's a great kid, and gave him a break he really, really has earned in his life," Conner said.