Tamera Trujillo doesn’t wear her uniform when she attends classes at Diablo Valley College.

Nor does she wear casual clothing while supervising 16 police aides who patrol the campus and issue parking citations in the parking lot.

Nine units shy of an A.A. degree she will receive this month and five years short of retirement, Trujillo has made DVC the focus of her professional and student career.

Trujillo, 44, is a senior traffic officer, who began working for the college district 26 years ago at age 18, cleaning DVC classrooms and doing other work around the campus.

Her resume includes custodial work at DVC and Los Medanos College before becoming a police dispatcher at Contra Costa College in 1992 and taking the same job at DVC one year later. In 2002, she was promoted to senior traffic officer.

“My mother was the custodial supervisor so I had to wait for her to leave [before returning to DVC],” Trujillo said.

In addition to working here, she began taking classes and achieved a certificate in business management.

Trujillo does it all.

In charge of 16 police aides and parking enforcement, she also sets the budget for the three community college police departments, does the billing and scheduling for special events on campus and also does the time cards for all the aides.

“Over all, the campus is very safe,” Trujillo said, adding that DVC crime usually entails small petty theft like books, purses, backpacks, and cell phones.

The most serious situations, she said, are medical emergencies, because “they’re life or death.”

She recalled a time when a woman had a brain hemorrhage and students watched as the elevator opened and closed on her but did nothing to help. The woman died.

Trujillo prides herself on being fair in every situation that comes her way. If she writes up one police aide for disciplinary action, it will be the same all across the board, she said.

“She doesn’t take any ‘BS’,” said police aide Kristina Foster “and she is real easy to talk to.”

Trujillo keeps a close eye on her employees.

“If the students have a hard time financially, I invite them home for dinner or I buy them lunch if I need to,” she said.