Newsmakers: 40-Year Commuter Bids Farewell to 80th Avenue
An area woman recently took her final Metra ride home after four decades of spending time on the rails.
Cathy Lia was just an Oak Lawn teenager when she started taking Metra to her job in downtown Chicago in 1972.
But the Orland Park resident stepped off a Metra train at the 80th Avenue station in Tinley Park for the last time this month.
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“This was my last ride,” she said after getting hugs all around by her loving family.
Lia is trading her job of 28 years at a Loop law firm for a position as baby sitter for her granddaughter and a few days a week with her husband, Thomas, at the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board in Orland Park.
“When I first started, I caught the train in Oak Lawn,” she said. “Monthly tickets were only $29 back then and Sears Tower wasn’t even built yet.”
Read on for more of Cathy Lia's story and memories from her decades on the rails.
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