Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/566087
September 2015 | Overdrive | 45 Untitled-26 1 8/18/15 10:18 AM Sunrise Transport, which named her Driver of the Year in 2013. Yet she's had to work through challenges in her career and personal life to get where she is. Just over 15 years ago, Fatta was a single mother working part time while staying home with her young daughter. She and a friend, looking for a change of pace from their jobs, learned about truck- ing at a career-development seminar and enrolled in driving school. Fatta earned her commercial driver's license, went to work for Sunrise and has been trucking and training drivers ever since. Many of her former trainees have taken to social media to congratulate her on winning. "I think a lot of women – and some men! – say, 'If Joanne can do it, so can I!' " she says. But Fatta's professional success didn't prepare her for what happened when she turned 50 and went in for a routine health checkup. "I'm a very active person, always on the move, constantly doing stuff, always in a positive mood," she says. "That's why I never saw it coming." After receiving a mammogram as part of the checkup, "They asked me to wait, and everyone else in the waiting room kept leaving while I was left sitting there," Fatta says. "Finally, they called me back, and the radiologist had bad news. I should have known then that the hardest part is you have to wait for everything. "That began a journey that included biopsy, surgery, lumpectomy and radiation. It makes you stronger in the long run, but it was a lonely, tough time. I took seven weeks off to go through the treatments and never thought I'd get my strength back. I had to rely on my parents to help, and then, good news: I finally got clear margins and was able to slowly get back to my life." Since her award was announced, Fatta has been flooded with good wishes and an outpouring of positive media attention. One of the responses she's most proud of came from a young woman who saw her interviewed on local television. "She decided to enroll in the trucking school where I teach and said she had never considered a career in trucking until she saw my interview," Fatta says.