Maria Madrid loves her job.
As head chef at Lamar Early Education Center, she and her team prepare about 400 meals a day for students, and she loves seeing the smiles on their faces as they pick up their trays and eat.
Recently, Madrid received the School Nutrition of the Year award from the Ector County Independent School District.
The district will hand out surprise awards in May, and employees will receive a large poster to put up, as well as a certificate and cash award from the Odessa Education Foundation.
This year, 15 team members were honored: Madrid is a strong believer in the district’s vision of students owning the future.
She also has strong belief in her faith and God; she attends the Apostolic Faith Chapel.
“God is my source of strength, giving me the physical and mental support so that I have the energy I need throughout my working hours,” Madrid said.
She grew up on a ranch near Ohinaga, Chihuahua, in a farming family.
She came to Odessa about 25 years ago and worked in a restaurant for a few years, when one day her nieces invited her to eat at their school.
Seeing the children lining up to receive their lunches and happily eating them, “I knew working in a school cafeteria was what I wanted to do,” Madrid says.
She then applied and was hired, working at Blackshear Elementary for six years and Lamar Elementary for 11 years.
“I enjoy my job and I try to do the best I can,” Madrid said.
She added that winning the Employee of the Year award came as a big surprise.
They told her they would be meeting with the principal that morning. When the time came, they left the cafeteria and met with Superintendent Scott Muri and his team, as well as School Nutrition Director Jiun Pando and his team.
The award was announced to be for her. She never imagined she would be recognized in this way.
“I am honored and grateful to receive this recognition. I don’t go into my work expecting any recognition, so receiving this recognition motivates me to work even harder,” Madrid said.
She added that she is grateful for the incentives provided by the Education Foundation.
Thanks to her parents, she learned to plant, work and harvest.
“I look at the ECISD motto, ‘Our Students Are the Future,’ and I identify with that,” she said.
Madrid said she was honored to have achieved a personal goal and feel like she was contributing something to her community and “this beautiful country that has opened the door to a better future for me.”
The school’s nutrition department has separate sections for meat, vegetables and fruit, and Madrid says she makes the main dishes herself.
Madrid, a native of Ohinaga, Mexico, has been with ECISD for 17 years.
Prior to coming to Lamar, she worked at Blackshear Elementary, where she cooked 1,200 meals a day, covering Blackshear and Milam elementary schools and the Carver Early Education Center from one kitchen.
Lamar provides about 450 meals per day to campus and the YMCA.
Even though she cooks all day long, she still likes to cook at home.
She and her husband, Paz Carrillo, have three children and six grandchildren, the youngest of which are twin girls who attended kindergarten at Lamar last year.
Monserrat Garza, Carver’s administrative assistant, said she thinks it’s great that Madrid won the award.
“They’ve worked so hard and they deserve everything they get,” Garza said.
She said the school’s nutritionists have been handing out breakfast throughout the hallways.
“She’s a very hard worker. You see her walking up and down (the hallways) all the time,” Garza said.
“She’s very caring and always says hello to everyone, but you can see how she works,” she added.
