Trish is MCRD’s go-to person when things simply need to get done—constructing a stage, coordinating an event, collaborating with other agencies, rounding up vendors and supplies, lining a soccer field, arranging for a last-minute band, working with youth and senior programs, playing the MCRD dinosaur mascot T-Recs . . . you name it. “Actually,” she says with a laugh, “I might be a Jack of all trades, but I’m the master of none.”

So not true.

“It’s about what she doesn’t do,” says retired division chief Rita Howard, who is privy to more Trish-in-the-field tales than she can count. “Trish does this sort of thing all the time and not just for the Recreation Department, but any department in County government that calls. She’s one of these people who doesn’t know how to say ‘no,’ and probably wouldn’t if she could.”

For all of her diligence, Trish was honored last spring as the Montgomery County Employee of the Year. The award is resounding acknowledgement of her effort—and importance—to County service. Likewise, her co-workers, fellow County employees and the public were quick to applaud. The multi-department phone calls, e-mails and congratulations flooded in within minutes of the announcement.

“I was pretty overwhelmed that so many people thought of me that way,” Trish said. “I’m all about work, all about work ethic. I’m good at work, it’s where I’m most comfortable. My philosophy is we work for the public, per se, so the public deserves to go to one of our events and have fun, have a good time, enjoy themselves, and leave there with a happy feeling. Seeing the happy expression on people’s faces when they come to one of our events and have a good time makes it all worthwhile.”

While Trish’s job description seems more narrowly defined, she's actually the department's point person when something is needed. Cases of wet-wipes at an evacuation shelter? No problem. The performing band back out in the last hours? Piece-o-cake. No one to referee this game? Play ball!

If there is a civic emergency or problem at some event, Trish is the best pressure player around. Sometimes that call to duty isn't always so pleasant, like the summer she had to organize a quick trash pickup at the fun centers because there weren’t any trash cans.

“There were these little white bugs crawling all over the trash and we had no idea what they were,“ she said. ”It was nasty. But we had to get that trash out of there and away from the kids.“

Trish began at MCRD in 1986 as a part-time employee while in high school and landed a full-time job out of college. She’s worked at the Wheaton Community Center, on the Sports team at MCRD, and now with the Affiliated office coordinating and managing events. She has coordinated youth leagues, chaperoned low-income kids on field trips, worked with seniors and special needs kids, and remains the total team player.

When Hurricane Isabell blew through in 2003, she helped inspect community centers for damage, delivering generators and doing whatever was needed at the sites. When there was a need for a mascot for fire and safety, Trish donned the costume of “Sparky” and has played a huge role in teaching kids about safety. It's not unusual for her to be setting one up event, break away to play T-Recs or Sparky at some function, run some quick departmental errands, and return to her staging.

Matters can also get pretty humorous. For example, there was a July 4 celebration event in which the towering balloon that gave a sightline for the fireworks kept disappearing.

“Within three hours some kids had cut it down,” she said. “The next day we put up another one and a storm came through and took it away. So we put up another and it got cut loose. Within a two-week span we put up three balloons and none of them was ever up more than 24 hours. I thought it was pretty darn hysterical.”

When the Recreation Department came up with the idea of the mascot T-Recs, there was little question who was the perfect fit to go inside the bulky, sweltering costume.

“T-Recs is fun because I’m the same person with kids in-person as I am in the costume,” she says. “The funny thing is, a lot of kids look at T-Recs and think he is Barney and they go nuts and start crawling all over you and giving you hugs. It’s pretty great.”

Thankfully, T-Recs is a cartoon character and not a living mammal. A few years ago at the Ethnic Heritage Festival in Silver Spring, a group of paraders consisted of a horse team going up the street.

“Our job was to pick up the horse manure—shovel it and bag it,” Trish recalled. “That was probably my worst. I wasn’t too happy about that one, but for the most part the work and the people make it all worthwhile. What we do isn’t brain surgery. We’re recreation. We’re supposed to have fun.”