Description
Bob Sorenson is a native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he was born in 1950. His family moved to California in 1951, where he was raised. Sorenson attended San Francisco State University and then joined Caltrans in 1977 as a maintenance worker, initially working as a “lane scrubber” at the Bay Bridge toll plaza. Sorenson then began driving tow trucks on the bridge and operating other heavy equipment in a maintenance capacity. He retired as bridge maintenance supervisor in 2012. In this interview, Sorenson discusses the Bay Bridge from the vantage point of a maintenance worker, including safety issues, encounters with the California Highway Patrol, car wrecks and suicides, and the difficult tasks of cleaning and maintaining the bridge.